Quote:
Originally Posted by queentess
The hardback came out and I went to Tor's website to ask about the release date for the ebook. I was told the ebook would not be published for a YEAR. Now, why would I wait a year for an ebook when it's available now on the darknet? Publisher just screwed themselves (and their author) out of a sale. And now I buy all Tor books second hand or pirated.
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And there it is in a nutshell.
No matter where you look in the digital environment, sellers think that they can maximize their profits by controling the sales environment. They do this by linking the content to the hardware, and making it hard for customers to unlink them. Think Apple. Think Wii.
But in certain environments, piracy makes it impossible to do this on a long time basis. So the reaction is to try and control the sales environment for a specific time frame - e.g., Netflix not making movies available till they've been out on DVD for 30 days.
That is what is going on with the "hardback first" approach. The content is being linked to the hardware (in the form of the hardback,) and the publishers are trying to keep their product out of the electronic sales stream for several weeks.
The common denominator seems to be a belief that the market for the DVD/hardback is inelastic. What I think they are going to find out is that both hardback sales & esales are going to drop. It's as if all the car companies said that they were only going to sell the top of the line model for a year, then introduce the midlevel and low level models. The natural reaction is for the customer who doesn't want the top model to look around for a second hand car. A year later, he's not going to be in the market for a new car of any kind.