MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - 5%, or 100,000 copies, of "The Lost Symbol" were sold as e-books

markbot · 09-24-2009, 10:09 AM

I would think the publishers should be more gungho on ebooks since they effectively limit the secondary market, where they lose a lot of money. They are also much cheaper to distribute. At the end of the day, I think they might even make more money on the $9.99 ebook version. I'm not sure about the used book market..but I wouldn't be surprised if on average each book is read by more than 2 people by the end of its life, considering that each book can be resold or borrowed multiple times.

My feeling is that the real reason why the publishers are hesitant about ebooks is that they lose control of the medium. Fastward 10 years when ebooks are mainstream....does a Dan Brown need a publisher as much? He will but he'll be able to get a fatter slice of the profit.

09-24-2009, 10:09 AM	#27
markbot Guru Posts: 612 Karma: 7511929 Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: New York, NY Device: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2	I would think the publishers should be more gungho on ebooks since they effectively limit the secondary market, where they lose a lot of money. They are also much cheaper to distribute. At the end of the day, I think they might even make more money on the $9.99 ebook version. I'm not sure about the used book market..but I wouldn't be surprised if on average each book is read by more than 2 people by the end of its life, considering that each book can be resold or borrowed multiple times. My feeling is that the real reason why the publishers are hesitant about ebooks is that they lose control of the medium. Fastward 10 years when ebooks are mainstream....does a Dan Brown need a publisher as much? He will but he'll be able to get a fatter slice of the profit.