Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Yes, but the volume of piracy matters, and one of the major factors is the availability of a reasonably priced legal version.
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The volume of piracy does matter, but just what
is the volume? We don't know, and we
can't know. There's no way to measure it.
Quote:
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If you're a publisher, you're stuck in a 90's mindset.
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No, I'm stuck in a "How do I
survive?" mindset.
Publishing has been in the doldrums for years. There are too many books chasing too few readers, unit sales are flat or down, and revenue is up (if it is) only because of price increases. Many major publishers are part of media conglomerates who want revenue and profitability publishing
can't achieve. Some of the media conglomerates are unloading their book publishing operations (like Time Warner selling off Warner Books to Hachette, who now call it Grand Central Publishing). Management at major corporations are custodians of Other People's Money, with a fiduciary responsibility to invest corporate funds where they will earn the best returns. If my other businesses are films, TV, and music, publishing is out. It
can't provide comparable returns. Media conglomerates acquired publishers in the first place thinking having all forms of content under the same roof made sense, but rapidly discovered the expected synergies were elusive, and are rethinking the business model.
Yes, availability of a reasonably priced legal edition is a factor. But the first question is "What
is reasonably priced?" Publishers expecting consumers to shell out hardcover prices for an electronic edition are living in a dream world. The question is what price the consumer
will pay, and everyone is reading the tea leaves trying to determine that.
My personal belief is that the market will pay for value, and to succeed, you must provide value, at a price the customer is willing to pay, and make it as easy as possible for the customer to give you money. If I'm a publisher, I see things like DRM as illusory protections, because any DRM scheme can and will be cracked,and all I'm really doing is annoying the customer.
But we sill have the issue of what the customer is willing to pay. The sense I have is that most folks will balk at an ebook price significantly higher than the mass market paperback edition. They know the publisher's costs are lower, as there are no manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping costs for ebooks, and expect savings to be passed along.
I can see higher prices for specialty items. I don't expect to see textbooks, reference books and similar things at MMPB prices. They cost more to produce, and have a smaller market. And I can see higher prices for titles with high demand, where people will pay more to get it now rather than waiting for the cheaper paperback edition, so I might release popular titles as ebooks simultaneously with the hardcover, at a trade paperback price point, and drop the ebook price when the MMPB edition gets released.
But if the publisher holds off on ebook release, how does pirating occur? There isn't an electronic file to pirate, so pirates are reduced to scan and OCR to produce the electronic edition. I've seen some of those. I wouldn't take them
free.
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Dennis