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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
It is about price control.
The fundamental point to recall about the contretemps between Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan vs Amazon that resulted in the agency pricing model was protecting the hardcover best seller. Those are the crown jewels of the industry. They sell for the highest prices, have the highest margins, and make the most profit.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Unfortunately, there's a lack of realism in the market about how cheap an ebook can be. Books incur a variety of costs before they ever reach the point of being printed and bound or released as an ebook file. Those costs will place a lower limit on how low an ebook can be priced and make any money. An editor I know estimated that manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution comprise about 10% of the total budget for the average book. I think his estimate is low, but even if the actual percentage is double that, eliminating printing, binding, warehousing and distribution won't magically lower costs enough to hit the price points a lot of folks hope for.
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As long as people think ebooks are less valuable than hard back books then publishers will value them less than hard back books. Expect delays and poor quality. If people are willing to pay hard back prices for ebooks, publishers will start to respect them more, and they will be more valuable.
Amazon, and to a much lesser extent BN, did ebooks a huge disservice by selling them so cheap. Now there are actually people who rant about books costing more than $9.99, tagging them on Amazon, etc. The damage is done, I think, but we'll see. Maybe people will get used to $14, $15, even $20 for a new release.
One more note: Publishers have to get good at notifying sellers to lower the price when a paperback is released. That's part of the whole deal, right?