Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
The other point that seems to be missed is that publishers have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders to try to increase profits. If publishers increase sales by expanding into a new market and then immediately reduce prices on other products so as not to increase their profits, then they are not doing their jobs. In fact, it sounds pretty communist to me.
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They could increase profits by lowering cost-per-unit and increasing sales dramatically. Baen and several small publishers manage to do this. If their real concern were "increased profit," they'd look at what makes ebooks sell well (no DRM, low price per book, complete series esp. when a new one is released, multiple filetype availability, don't fret about filesharing as long as the actual sales are decent). They're not trying to increase ebook profits; they're trying to prevent ebooks from cutting into hardcover profits even a little bit--because the ebook market scares & confuses them, and they understand paper.
They just don't want to acknowledge that the paper book market is going to change, too.