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Originally Posted by stustaff
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I was however making the point that Baen are not a company selling AAA author titles that would sell in Hardback at $25 each so they are making the right decision marketing wise for THEM.
That does not mean that if macmillan were to follow the same marketing strategy as Baen that they would be succesful, also im fairly confident that macmillan male more money than Baen, so it could be argued quite sensibly that macmillans way works better!
Again where did I say I dont like Baen? or their marketing?
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I haven't seen anywhere that you said you don't like them, or that you don't like their marketing. You do, however, seem to have a few small misunderstandings...
Many of Baen's titles are
exactly those "AAA author titles that would sell in Hardback at $25 each!" For example, new books in the Honor Harrington series routinely hit the NYT Hardcover fiction bestsellers list. At prices exceeding $25.00 each. And so do new 1632 series books. And new Bujold. And...
Secondly, there are quite a few metrics on which we could argue that "Baen's way is better." Business-oriented metrics, at that. For example:
- Growth rate. Baen's been growing steadily over the past decade, measured in both unit sales and revenue. The publishing industry as a whole has been shrinking over that same period, in both unit sales and revenue.
- Sell-through. Baen's typical sell-through is north of 75%. Industry numbers average vastly worse. Baen is the envy of the industry on this front.
- Success at making the transition to electronic formats. Baen gets somewhere between 10% and 20% of gross from eBooks. (Estimates vary, depending on whose statements you start from, and how you parse the tea-leaves. Suffice it to say that electronic sales bring in more $$ than all non-US sales combined -- including Canadian sales.) NONE of the majors are anywhere near this number.
- Customer satisfaction. Baen's DTF (dead tree format) customers are pretty happy with them. Baen's eBook customers are thrilled with them.
- Brand loyalty. Baen's customers (especially for eBooks) actually notice and care who published the book. None of the majors can make that claim.
- Percentage of books that hit the NYT best-sellers list. Baen is kicking MacMillan's butt on this one! (There are some advantages to being small...)
Xenophon