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#151 | |
Bibliophagist
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For instance, someone walks into your auto parts department and asks for a whizzimajig for a 1974 Mustang Ghia. The tech says sorry, we don't have that part in stock. That is a lost sale. Then we have the other guy who is haunting automobile scrap yards looking for that part. That is not a lost sale since there was no intention of purchasing from your auto parts department. |
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#152 |
Karma Kameleon
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The publishers, like all businesses, are very well aware of price vs demand. They have all the data. They aren't having to guess.
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#153 |
Resident Curmudgeon
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One thing I think is wrong for the library to do is have automatic borrows. The borrows should be manual and if the person misses the window to borrow, then so be it. It then means that the next person on the wait list gets it sooner.
Automatic borrowing means it gets borrowed even if the person borrowing it doesn't have time to read it. If I have 4 books out with a 3-week borrow, I doubt I'd have time for a 5th. But with automatic borrow, I get that 5th book even if I don't read it. I just leave it and eventually it goes to someone else. But in 2 days it would go to someone else instead of 3-weeks. |
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#154 |
Resident Curmudgeon
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The thing I want to know is what is the lowest price point for an eBook where the extra sales make up for the lower price.
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#155 | ||
o saeclum infacetum
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I suspect that with a manual hold, most will just check out a book anyway and hope for the best, even if they're likely not to have the time. Also, and this will add up, if everyone takes advantage of the two-day window because most aren't ready to start reading a book right away, that adds two (or three, or whatever) days to the borrow. A two-weeks borrow (and my libraries are mostly two weeks) with a three-day checkout period has effectively added 20% to the borrow time. Quote:
Moreover, publishers are champs at price discrimination; they maximize revenues by starting high and skimming off those buyers who'll pay a lot to get it now, and then the price will go down to get the cheaper folks who are willing to wait. Finally, I'll bring up "fair" one more time. Fair to whom, exactly? Would cheaper ebook prices be fairer to the writer? To the publisher, who's got salaries to pay and overhead to cover? Your notion of "fair" seems really to mean "fair to me," and if you parse that, "fair to me" seems to mean, "what I think I should pay." Last edited by issybird; 10-24-2019 at 02:19 PM. |
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#156 | |
Resident Curmudgeon
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#157 | |
Wizard
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I did not say publishers can not create sales. That would indeed be ludicrous. What I said was publishers are going to count people who only borrow books as 'lost sales' because those people could have bought the book REGARDLESS of the publisher selling to the library. Publishers likely are as stubborn as I am on this, they just don't bother discussing it with random people on the internet. |
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#158 | ||||
Wizard
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#159 |
o saeclum infacetum
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It might cost less anyway. And you're moving the goalposts; just suppose having the pBook cheaper than the ebook maximizes revenues? Wouldn't the publisher be unfair both to the company and the author if it engaged in price-cutting that also cut revenues? And then there's the suit from the shareholders....
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#160 | |
Wizard
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It seems rather unfair that a conglomerate like Amazon can afford to drive off competition by selling pbooks for dirt cheap while those competitors can't stay in business and price match. In the context of ebooks it seems unfair especially since, for most people, they're locked in to an ecosystem with a given purchase. So Amazon sells ebooks at dirt cheap prices driving sales of their Kindle devices up for those who don't want to read on a tablet/phone/etc. |
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#161 | |
Bibliophagist
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As for lost sales, again the definition I have always seen and used was a lost sale is when the customer wants to make a purchase and you are not able to supply what they wanted to purchase. |
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#162 | |
Wizard
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OK this is the last I'm going to talk about lost sales in this context, since it's marginally related to the topic and between you, tiger, and me we're derailing this topic such as it is. A person who has no interest in an item at all is not a lost sale. A person who has interest in an item, but does not buy it is a lost sale. The reason itself doesn't matter for the context of calling it a lost sale it only matters in the context of trying to recoup that lost sale. Now since library borrowing exists it creates a group that can have no intention to purchase, but who still acquires the book. These are still lost sales, they are just accounted for as ones which there isn't anything that could be changed. In the post that sparked this whole back and forth, Jon would fall into a person who has interest in the item group. |
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#163 | |
Resident Curmudgeon
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I know someone who is interested in high-end cars but he'll never buy one. So are all those high-end car companies losing sales? Not a single sale is lot. |
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#164 | |
Wizard
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#165 |
Groupie
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I think I have returned every ebook I borrowed early. 14 days allowed, earliest was 3 days longest was 11 days.
I automatically put all my ebooks on hold for 30 days. Then when I want to read one, I choose one that I have moved to the front of the list on, take it off hold and usually get my turn in 1 to 4 days. This way I wont miss a borrow turn or use auto borrow. It's the equivalent of getting to the front of the shopping line and then let people go ahead of you while you wait for your spouse to come up with the milk you forgot. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk |
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