Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
But from the point of view of the economics of writing, paper books are still where most of the money comes from. And one's standing with one's publisher, and with all the wholesalers and bookstore chains, depends far more on the sales of one's current p-book than anything else. So, it's possible to make encouraging inroads into the ebook market, but get killed in the paper market. (And many authors, not just me, are getting killed in the paper market, especially mass market paperbacks.)
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I get what you're saying. But here's the thing, there are some readers (like me) where you are never going to get that paper sale anyway. I do buy paper books, but they are all cookbooks and fitness books and things like this. I have enough trouble making bookshelf space for those! So I can love the author and support the author or whatever, but if they are waiting for that paper sale from me, they are going to be waiting a long time because it's just not going to happen. This whole idea that if the ebook sale is restricted, it will preserve what would have been a paper sale is completely not true because you were never going to get the paper sale anyway. Granted, this is not going to be true for everyone. But many ebook readers ARE voracious readers and I bet you'll hear this story more than once. It's not 'will you buy the paper or will you buy the ebook?' for me. It's 'will you buy the ebook, or will you buy nothing?' So trying to preserve the paper sale is a futile argument.