Quote:
Originally Posted by bgalbrecht
While I prefer the Webscriptions model, I can understand the publishers wanting to keep the "dynamic pricing" model of Hardback, trade paperback, mass market paperback, where the cheap MMPB comes out about a year after the HB edition. In general, I have enough to read that I'm willing to wait for the MMPB (or equivalent priced ebook) to come out (or borrow it from the library).
My biggest concern is that ebook dynamic pricing doesn't have the book return feedback that paper books do. With paper books, if the publisher gets a lot of returns, he's crediting the bookstores, and (at least for HBs) ends up with stock to warehouse. With ebooks, there are no returns, so unless the publisher is attentive, there's no incentive to drop the price of an older backlist book. Sure, Macmillan claims that they'll drop ebooks to $5.99, but they're not doing it now. For example, a popular author like Sue Grafton has a number of backlist MMPB books with a retail price of $7.99, but the ebooks are sold at $14 and up. Over at Fictionwise, BOB, etc. there are plenty of ebooks that didn't drop in price to match the MMPB (especially books by MacMillan and its subsidiaries). Say what you want about Amazon and its motives (it's all about Amazon's profit), but I think they've been one of the few forces to push the publishers to match the MMPB price with ebooks, and the agency pricing model is going to take that away.
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Always be sure to remember that the main "magic" of the webscriptions model is that they've cut out 1.5 of the (usually) two layers of distribution between publisher and reader. It's
not quite publisher-direct sales—Webscriptions is a separate company—but it's also
not quite like a separate retailer either—Webscriptions takes on many* of the eBook preparation costs that are usually born entirely by the publisher. (*Or so I understand from the body of overall comments by various Baen & Webscriptions folks over the years.) This means that they've moved up the value chain, and are able to avoid most of the markup normally taken by distributors and retailers. Their low pricing shows that they split the benefit with the readers... but don't ask me to figure out how much we get and how much they keep, as I have no clue!
As for dynamic pricing, they most certainly do that too! How else would you describe selling eARCs at $15 for advance access to an unedited book? How else would you describe books that are older still showing up in the Free Library? Or included on freely-distributable CDs? Baen's dynamic pricing for eBooks just has three price-points: early access is $15/book, regular access is $6/book (quantity one) and/or $15/bundle (quantity 4-8), access to (many) older books is free!
Also note that even the books that are available for free
continue to sell in bits! And it isn't because the buyers don't know that the book is available for free, either. Rather, there's a subset of fans who choose to pay anyway in order to subsidize a publisher who's doing right by the readers as well as to send a bit more royalty money to an author they like.
Xenophon
(No connection to Baen except as a fan-boy from way back)