Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
It would have been very bad for the readers since the sale of best sellers is making it possible to publish non-best sellers.
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So what keeps Baen Books in business? They sell ebooks at $5-$6 apiece, without benefit of NYT bestsellers. They sell a lot of them.
We could use some input from someone with publishing industry experience here: Do bestsellers subsidize the midlist? Does the midlust subsidize bestsellers? Do they live separate economic lives? How does it work, economically?
Also, what's usual in publishing contracts regarding keeping the book in print? If the publisher decides to stop selling a book, is there a provision for the rights to revert back to the author? Is that different for ebooks?
But in any event, that's irrelevant to this discussion. If Amazon was buying books (e- or p-) for $15 each from the publisher and selling them for $10 each as a loss leader, it's no different from the publisher's point of view than if they were buying those same books for that same $15 and selling them for $30 each. The publisher gets $15 either way. Except, of course, that they'd probably get a lot more $15's in the former case, since they'd be selling more $10 books than $30 books.