Quote:
Originally Posted by FizzyWater
In the past, they at least pretended the price of the physical book had some relationship to the price of the supplies used to create the book.
|
No, they never 'pretended' that, you inferred it, and, I must say, inferred it incorrectly. This fixation on physical properties seems common, but it's wrong.
Hardbacks can be ridiculously cheap to print on a large run, and I've certainly come across hardbacks that were less durable than a well-made paperback.
The fact is that, in the majority of cases, when you buy a hardback you're paying for the privilege of not waiting for the discount paperback. That's always been the case. This is market segmentation at work - some are willing to pay more to get a product fast or to receive other perceived benefits, others prefer to wait and forgo those benefits in order to save money. If you want to maximise profit you'll have a strategy that caters to both sectors.
As I say in my comment to the blog post, there's no reason that market segmentation can't be maintained for ebook offerings.