Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Tingle
I didn't carry it out explicitly, but in most businesses, a one or two year payback time is very generous. In publishing, with common book press runs of only 10-50,000 books and returns of over 50%, what happens next year is likely irrelevant, unless your name is Nora Roberts or Steven King. Most books never earn out. Most also disappear from shelves within a year.
One of the small, but real benefits of ebooks to both authors and publishers is the ability to keep backlist books "in print" for an indefinite period of time without running afoul of the "Thor Power Tools" inventory ruling. It means you might be able to _buy_ the ebook of that obscure third volume of the not-very-well-selling series Joe Midlist wrote in 1993 instead of scouring used book stores for it.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
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I think that
Ralph Sir Edward was only referring to the ebook portion of the equation which was all that was being referenced in the article he was referring to. In that case, as long as the retailer (company running the website and the servers that are storing the ebook) is willing to leave it up there is a potential for sales.