Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I'm not sure the mass market is subsidized by the higher priced spread. There are still any number of books that don't get hardcover or trade PB editions. What subsidizes them?
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The author's advance.
There's certainly profit to be made at the low-end, but it's just not as much on a per-book basis. A lot of Genre fiction goes straight to video and debuts in paperback (this has been true of Genre fiction for decades). The publishers and authors adapt by pumping out large numbers of titles a year, which is easy if you're basically just writing from a template. Some Genre writers manage to produce excellent work despite these conditions, but there's still a lot of formulaic drek.
I certainly wouldn't like this to become the norm for the book industry as a whole.