Quote:
Originally Posted by catsittingstill
Just like day-old bread is cheaper, it seems appropriate to me that year-old books should be cheaper--the people who really, really wanted it have already bought, and now you're trying to tempt passers-by with lower prices. Using the date the paperback comes out is a convenient way to decide when the book is old enough to count as "not fresh anymore, but still edible."
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Yep. And I could tolerate a model that worked on that principle, I think - hell, lots of releases on Fictionwise work that way, and after *umpty*-*cough* years of buying books I'm used to waiting for the paperback if it's not a book I must have
right now.
But let's face the facts - the whole 'new release bestseller hardcover' thing is a feint, a Trojan Horse, the tip of the camel's nose. If Macmillan is successful in driving up the price to $15*, it's going to
stay there, and that's going to be the new default price, +/- 2 dollars**. Take a look at Amazon - lots of stuff priced in the $8-12 range, not so much outside it. Certainly don't see a lot of Kindle versions mass-market originals listing for $3.50 compared to the $7 of the paperback.
* Interestingly, $15 comes out pretty close to the 'real' hardcover price when you take into account that 30-40% of the print run of the average hardcover gets pulped or dumped after it gets returned to the publisher because it didn't sell.
** At least if enough people buy them. The other option will be that when they realize they moved all of 3 e-copies of Steven King's latest brick they'll abandon the market and e-books will go the way of vinyl LPs. They'll still exist, but in very limited numbers and for a truly hardcore market.