Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
...and in any other business, if you had customers prepared to pay X and you wanted to charge Not-X, you would work to bring your costs down and streamline your operation to retain the customers you have and attract new ones.
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Well e-books are new, and are a pretty tiny portion of overall book sales still.
So as it grows the market will determine where e-book pricing needs to be to maximize sales. It's too small a niche to have much influence on pricing yet.
My only concern is that it works out so authors get their same $ per copy and not less $$$ because they get a set % of sales and ebooks are cheaper. Authors aren't working any less hard, publishers are by saving some on shipping and printing etc.
But that's on publishers to not rape authors on e-books, and on authors to not sign crappy contracts. Heck, as e-books go big time established authors won't even really need publishers any more. They can just put out stuff on their own like bands like Pearl Jam do now.
Sell digital content on their websites, hire a printer to do smaller runs and sell books on the website and in independent books stores or maybe one chain etc.--all of which Pearl Jam did with their last album. Only available on their website, in Target and in some independent stores as they are no longer signed to any record label, having fulfilled their long contract with Epic with the album before this one.