Hi,
I tend to agree a lot with the quoted comments, and some authors commenting here and there expressed exactly the same sentiments (even the top selling ebook authors that are published in print, say like David Weber and John Ringo at Baen still make no more than 10-20% of their money due to ebooks and this with very favourable ebook deals they get from Baen, which other authors may not get from other publishing houses).
The math is very simple: (fiction) ebooks ain't go to sell for more than 10$ (and that's optimistic I think, maybe 7-8 would be closer) for something new and 5-6$ for something older than 1 year, unless you throw in big incentives like earcs (and that term depends of course of a print date existing), while hc sell for 25$ or more of which the publisher gets 40-50% at least. From here you can go to argument, returns vs piracy and so on...
Also how libraries are going to be handled will be very important in any viable ebook model (let us not forget that here in the US publishers make tons of money of libraries, and for many hc titles the library sells are a very significant part of total sells).
To me though it seems obvious that as of now no current pure ebook business model has any shot at decent profitability, so what is needed are different business models to be experimented until some that work are found.
Liviu
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Originally Posted by CommanderROR
The dilemma is, that unless the ebook market is large enough, authors won't dare venture into it for fear of angering their publishers and losing the paperback sales without having adequate "recompense" through ebook sales.
But where do you get the large market if nobody dares to enter it...
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