December 2008 eBook Sales Statistics Released (+119.9%)

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Alisa

True but profit margin makes a huge difference. Of course if it seems they can keep increasing volume, they may be willing to take a bit lower margin.

true. it seems pretty obvious to me that it's better for a publisher to sell 1000 books at 6$ than 100 books at 15$. but then what do i know.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

true. it seems pretty obvious to me that it's better for a publisher to sell 1000 books at 6$ than 100 books at 15$. but then what do i know.

But do THEY see that - I sometimes wonder ....

[Sparhawk2k]

While I think they would do better in the long run if they lower the prices to try to sell more, I also think it is more complicated than that. I have seen examples where they've lowered the price quite a bit and and I'm sure they've tracked the prices on those. If the sales didn't pick up enough to make up for the price drop then obviously they're not going to do that a lot.

Now, a lot of that is probably due to marketing and such. But I can understand them not wanting to hurt sales on things that are doing well by dropping prices around them and suddenly making them seem much more expensive... Though I think they're hurting themselves in the long run more than anything, If they do things right it seems like they could lower digital prices a lot and still get a higher margin eventually due to the reduced costs.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

But do THEY see that - I sometimes wonder ....

They already understand that they have to lower their margins over time. That's why they release paperbacks with much lower margin. Hardbacks cost more to produce but not nearly as much as the price difference would have you believe. The hardback is mostly just a way to get as many high margin sales as they can out of a title from the people who want to have it now and will pay more not to wait. Eventually they have to start competing with the used and library markets for the people that won't pay that, so they get some more of them in with the paperback. What they're miscalculating right now is how much people are willing to pay to have the ebook right away especially given that their biggest competition is free illegal downloading.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

true. it seems pretty obvious to me that it's better for a publisher to sell 1000 books at 6$ than 100 books at 15$.

Not if it costs them $6.01 to sell each copy, it's not .

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Not if it costs them $6.01 to sell each copy, it's not .

of course, the brilliant thing about ebooks is that the more you sell, the more the cost per unit for the publisher approaches zero, since there are no fabrication costs for reprints as there are for print books. which means that even if the first hundred cost 6.01 per copy, it's *still* in the best interest of everyone involved to sell more of them at a lower price. when talking about ebooks it doesn't even make sense to talk about how much it costs to sell each copy.

[GeoffC]

theoretically, more 'profit' for the publisher ought to mean an increase in royalty for the author (but I bet it won't)...

[anurag]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

perhaps, but that's just one country. in europe they're only just starting to take off, and in most third world countries i doubt they common at all.

Here's an interesting statistic:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=ebook...ate=all&sort=0

You can see that the United States is not in the top 10 countries searching for the word 'ebooks'. Of course that doesn't mean the ebook market is as developed in these countries as it is here, but people are certainly aware of ebooks there and that's where a lot of the money is going to be, going forward.