Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
It's a standing policy that users who prefer the lower-cost paperpacks must wait several months. While I agree that it would be great for e-books to come out at the same time as the hardcover, and clearly this is an inconvenience, I am not sure you have much ground to take any more offense from a delay in e-book publication than if you were a "paperback only" reader.
I also don't see much of a necessity yet for publishers to put out e-books simultaneously with the hardcovers, until a) e-books gain more market share and b) publishers have an idea of if/how e-books will affect hardcover sales and overall net income.
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Its possible that other publishers might have other results, but the only hard information we have is from Baen. Baen was very clearly a mmpb publisher at the time ebooks started. Then they started their Webscription program, and the results of simultaneous release of ebook and pbook drove them to become a mainly hardback publisher. The authors (and publisher) make more from each copy of the hardback, and hardback sales increased as the webscriptions went up. Let me repeat that - Hardback sales increase when an ebook is released simultaneously!
Why? I can only guess, but my guess is that ebook readers are more likely to comment or otherwise drive buzz - and since the first part of the webscription is available 3 months BEFORE the hardback release, this tends to drive pre-orders (of the hb). Thus printing cycles are more accurate, sales are better, and everyone wins.
And to make matters worse, they even make more money by selling the un-edited version even earlier, and call it an eARC (Advance Reader Copy - paper versions sent to reviewers so that reviews may appear at the same time as release). Which STILL DOES NOT HURT HARDBACK SALES.
So why do other publishers not get it? Not Invented Here, is my guess.