[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Patrick O'Brian - Aubrey Maturin Series
Colleen McCullough - Rome Series
Guy Gavriel Kay - Fionavar Series

I would actually be interested in investing in the cost of converting some of these to ebooks for a share of the profits. It wouldn't be hard to find someone that owned a used bookstore for 20 years who could tell you the big movers.

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Yeah, isn't it a shame? Publishers could so much benefit from the enthusiasm of customers who simply would like to see some back stock released ... but then, that's a wish for another world.

I agree. There are many older titles that would be of interest to many readers as ebooks. Readers could do the work of formatting the work as an ebook (for a reasonable fee), and then the publisher could offer the ebooks to the public for a small fee. If done in sufficient numbers, it could provide a continuing profit to the publishers from a source that wouldn't exist otherwise.

Comic book publishers have learned this lesson. Used to be, when an issue left the rack, your only hope to read the issue was to find a back issue at a comic shop, or find someone willing to sell your their copy. Otherwise, you were out of luck.

Now, publishers are releasing reprints of older issues for a reasonable fee. For example, DC Comics is releasing a series of black and white reprints called "Showcase Presents" which collects all of the stories of a character/group and presents them in chronological order. In most cases, to get the actual issues would likely cost hundreds of dollars, but this reprint costs less than $20. This reprint allows readers access to stories they otherwise would not be able to.

This could also be the case with ebooks for previously released printed books. Even if only a relatively few ebooks sold for each title, those are sales that otherwise would not have happened.