Quote:
Originally Posted by Spectrum
Mr. Garland suggested that just as consumers now pay 99 cents for a song they want instead of $15 for an album, they may come to feel the same way about $25 hardcover best sellers. Once they become accustomed to paying $9.99 for a book, they won't go back, he said.
|
That's a fascinating insight.
Yes, when customers get used to paying lower prices, they'll insist on them. Unfortunately for the publishers, they can't invent market rates; they can only influence them. If *all* publishers agreed to this, they might have a chance to keep their current pricing schedule. However, several other major publishers, and dozens (hundreds?) of small/independent publishers, and lots of individual authors, have decided that ebooks should be cheaper than hardcovers even when released at the same time.
Apparently, these publishers are oblivious to how many people *never* buy hardcovers, and are not switching from hardcover to ebook, but paperback to ebook. Insisting that their ebooks lag behind hardcover sales won't get them back the customers who buy from their competitors during the lag time, because when that 4 months is up, there's a new crop of bestsellers--and their competitors' titles are available as ebooks *now.*