Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
So these people who used to buy paperbacks a year after the original release still bought those paperbacks even though they weren't accompanied by a big marketing campaign? How have things changed?
So presumably you reject the idea that publishers should decide when to release a mass-market paperback as well? How dare they!
Consistency doesn't seem to be the strong suit here...
Agency-pricing is not a good thing, but it's Amazon's fault for trying to act the bully. And with the market in the state that it is, agency-pricing just happens to benefit them immensely, strange isn't it?
In the old days:
Book comes out in hardback, but you don't think it's worth the cost, so you wait a year and get the paperback.
Now:
Book comes out at full-price, but you don't think it's worth the cost, so you wait a year and get the discount version.
What's changed? Nothing
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Your 'consistency' argument is missing crucial elements.
First, the in-store factor - new paperback release tables. The physical memory jog of seeing a book that was mentioned.
Right now for ebooks, there's usually fanfare when something new is released (I get email from ebook vendors ranging from Amazon to BoB and Fictionwise) but there's not follow-up 1-2 years later.
Publishers can release the paperback whenever they want and they can set whatever prices they want. But I reserve the right to think they're idiotic if they release the first paperback 10 years after the hardback or if they price the book at a price I think is ridiculous high. And I reserve the right to not buy them.
But I also think that mandated selling prices and 'no sales price allowed situations' are annoying - it annoys me for physical hardware when Sony does it, it annoys me when Apple does it and it annoys me even more that Macmillan is planning on doing it for non-physical mediums.