Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
However, if the pbook is being simultaneously produced, those costs are part of an existing business model. Dan Brown's ebook costs are marginal (price of doc conversion & editing, if any, plus a bit of IT/uploading costs), because the advance, edit, proof & marketing costs were assumed to be included in the pbook publication.
|
My experience is that it is preplanned to do a p and an e version and that the costs are spread over expected sales of both, not just over the pbook.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The hard part is convincing the publishers that each ebook sale doesn't represent a lost hardcover sale.
|
Very true. The difficulty is that publishers do not divide the market into its component parts -- hardcover buyers, paperback buyers, and ebook buyers. Although there is some overlap in the sense that a hardcover buyer may also buy a paperback and/or an ebook, for the most part people tend not buy outside their preferred format. Thus a hardcover buyer will continue to buy hardcover even if the paperback or the ebook are also available. Price is not the consideration, esthetics and preferences are.
In my own case, I buy nonfiction in hardcover only, very rarely in ebook, and never in paperback. Fiction I buy only certain authors in hardcover and never buy them in either paperback or ebook, but the bulk of my fiction purchases are ebook. If it isn't in ebook, with the exception of a handful of preferred authors who I buy in hardcover, I simply do not buy the fiction book.
My wife, OTOH, buys paperback and only occasionally in hardcover and never in ebook. She dislikes the weight of the hardcovers and is only marginally interested in ebooks and thus doesn't have an ebook device.
In speaking with neighbors and relatives about their bookbuying habits, the scenario repeats itself; that is, they have their preferences and rarely deviate from them.