How many 'must-buy' authors do you have from Big 6 publishers?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Once the eBook is out there, the money is spent except for the cost to add DRM. So there does come a point where X number of copies at Y price is where they break even and X+1 is where they make a profit.

That's true for some value of X - but the point is not simply to break even, but to find the right combination of sales and profits.

If your fixed costs are $10 and you sell 10,000 books at $15, your profit is $50,000. To reach these profits at an $11 price point, you'd have to sell 50,000 books. Undoubtedly you would sell more books at $11 - but I'm not sure you would sell 5 times as many.

[Seli]

No idea, I assume a lot more than 10, but less than 50. A lot of these are in a non-immediate-buy category, but I will buy them at one point. Still I am willing to pay north of €20 for immediate access, at least I've done so for dead tree books.

[Angst]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

That's true for some value of X - but the point is not simply to break even, but to find the right combination of sales and profits.

If your fixed costs are $10 and you sell 10,000 books at $15, your profit is $50,000. To reach these profits at an $11 price point, you'd have to sell 50,000 books. Undoubtedly you would sell more books at $11 - but I'm not sure you would sell 5 times as many.

If your fixed costs are $10/book.

Not true for ebooks. There is no additional cost to the publisher after the first ebook is generated. (Except perhaps an accountant to make sure the money makes it into the publisher's bank account.)

For paperback books, on the other hand, there are the paper, printing, and distribution charges for every book.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Angst

If your fixed costs are $10/book.

Not true for ebooks. There is no additional cost to the publisher after the first ebook is generated. (Except perhaps an accountant to make sure the money makes it into the publisher's bank account.)

For paperback books, on the other hand, there are the paper, printing, and distribution charges for every book.

Thinking big picture, there's still marketing and other business overhead - like accounting to pay royalties, heating the buildings, IT support costs, etc.

Still. There's no distribution, that's certainly less.

[Fbone]

I never look to see who publishes my reading material. Afraid I don't know how to answer.

[TallMomof2]

I used to have about a half dozen "must buy" authors but all are with agency price fixing publishers so I have none on my "must buy" list. Nowadays, almost all my science fiction reading comes from Baen, no DRM and great prices. In the last year I've been spending a lot of my reading time with new (to me) authors who aren't with the agency publishers.

[elcreative]

Myth time again... one book generated hence no further costs So where do we get this book from? How about costs of servers (even if leased, it costs), staff to maintain (don't tell me you don't scream if the site you want is down), electricity, costs of doing business (paying card companies who want their cut, proper distribution of royalties, artwork for covers) etc... funnily enough these costs differ very little for paper or ebook AND make up a much larger proportion of the book cost than the no longer needed paper, printing and distribution ever did... Not saying it isn't cheaper but there are plenty of additional costs still included...

Damn, really must finish reading thread before replying... no matter how irritated...

Originally Posted by Angst

If your fixed costs are $10/book.

Not true for ebooks. There is no additional cost to the publisher after the first ebook is generated. (Except perhaps an accountant to make sure the money makes it into the publisher's bank account.)

For paperback books, on the other hand, there are the paper, printing, and distribution charges for every book.

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

Thinking big picture, there's still marketing and other business overhead - like accounting to pay royalties, heating the buildings, IT support costs, etc.

Still. There's no distribution, that's certainly less.

But why should all that, which goes to the production and selling of new books, count against old back list books?

Which if e-books didn't exist, probably wouldn't even be available?

Backlist e-book sales are basically found money for publishers...especially as it's the sites that actually sell the books that take care of most of the things like cost of delivery and keeping up the servers. About the only additional expense is accounting...

[snipenekkid]

Backlist sales would seem to represent something akin to recovery of sales lost to the used market today. If publishers play it the right way and actually put the backlist titles out there AND competitive with used prices. And a buck a book is going to pressure the used market.

What is the harm in putting a 30+ year old title out in ebook form for a buck? Sitting there it's dead remaindered stock. Listed for sale it's at least representing income potential of some sort at whatever price seems right.

Server overhead is a sunk cost for all online sellers/retailers and if they don't use them then it's as bad as leaving good stock out of reach to your customers who want to buy whatever the thing is being sold.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Myth time again... one book generated hence no further costs So where do we get this book from? How about costs of servers (even if leased, it costs), staff to maintain (don't tell me you don't scream if the site you want is down), electricity, costs of doing business (paying card companies who want their cut, proper distribution of royalties, artwork for covers) etc... funnily enough these costs differ very little for paper or ebook AND make up a much larger proportion of the book cost than the no longer needed paper, printing and distribution ever did... Not saying it isn't cheaper but there are plenty of additional costs still included...

Damn, really must finish reading thread before replying... no matter how irritated...

Apple will rent me a HD movie for $1.99 which is probably a 6GB download. That's the equivalent incremental IT costs of 6,000 ebook downloads. People tend to over estimate the incremental IT costs for companies like Amazon and Apple that already have the established infrastructure.

[Clancy_s]

Other - I read books from the big 5 but none of the authors are on my 'must buy' list. I have many on my 'enjoyable read' list for which a loan and read once will do.

[ellenoc]

When they went to agency pricing, I went to the library. I do buy reasonably priced ebooks, which these days means $7 and less, whether backlists authors are putting out themselves, smaller pubs that are smarter, or indies.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by SameOldStory

I'm buying, and reading, much more than ever because of the lower prices. In total, I would say that I'm spending more money than before too.

You must be reading other authors, or have been buying from other stores than I do. If I had to repurchase the books I from the Agency 6 before they went to the agency model, I'd probably have to pay at least 150% of what I paid for them via sales at Fictionwise. I have no "must buy" authors from the agency 6, but I've bought a few, mainly with discounted gift cards, because the books were discounted or I wanted to read something from a GOH at an upcoming convention.

[snipenekkid]

you know, I have a simple question. Is there a master list of alllllll the publishers and their associated imprints?

I ask because I really wonder if people even know what we are commenting on here. I know I haven't bought any because, well, I have only bought a couple fiction titles on Amazon all other titles have either been free, direct from the author or from smaller book sites like Webscription.com. Otherwise I probably would not have a true clue if I had been buying from one of them or not.

I can't even remember the last time I read the copyright page in a book. I just skip past the crap at the front to the first chapter. I might one day read the introduction or preface but generally speaking I skip those, often for years and years. I just want to get to the meat of the book darn it! So color be actually clueless. I have a suspicion I'm not the only one, or not.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

Is there a master list of alllllll the publishers and their associated imprints?

Probably the closest thing is Wikipedia. They're pretty good at listing all the major and mid-level publishers and include the imprints either in the article or in one of those info-boxes at the bottom.

As for paying attention to publishers, I do somewhat because I read a lot of sf/fantasy and each imprint tends to have a distinctive flavour for the sort of books they publish.

So I know that if I find one of those old Ace paperbacks in the used bookstore and it's a fantasy, it's likely to be a light comedic fantasy. Whereas a Del Rey of either genre will probably be some sort of epic, and Tor SF tends to be some sort of high-concept idea that's a bit on the "hard science fiction" side, while Warner's Questar and Aspect lines tended towards space opera-type adventure and magic-in-the-real-world urban fantasy (not the paranormal former-horror-beasties stuff that many people think of as UF these days).

Makes it easier to filter unfamiliar titles and help zoom in on stuff that's most likely to fit whatever reading mood I'm in.

Mind you, I still almost always go by authors first once I've gotten to know their work, and I've followed my favourites from publisher to publisher as their old contracts expire and they get new ones, or they just expand their imprint base.