How has your spending been, post-Agency?

[sassanik]

I am wondering if the big 5 don't see the people who buy lots of book through the year as their main customers? It seems to be me that they are catering to the public who buys a couple of books a year?

Admittidly their are a lot more people who only buy a couple of books a year, but I would think that the larger volume buyers would be the ones that they would want to cater to more?


Amy

[TallMomof2]

Originally Posted by sassanik

I am wondering if the big 5 don't see the people who buy lots of book through the year as their main customers? It seems to be me that they are catering to the public who buys a couple of books a year?

Admittidly their are a lot more people who only buy a couple of books a year, but I would think that the larger volume buyers would be the ones that they would want to cater to more?


Amy

I think you're on to something. There must be more money to be made from very casual readers who are willing to pay a higher price since book purchases make up a small part of their budgets. Most of my friends read, at most, a book every couple of months and are amazed at how much I read.

[bsandersen]

Many of my purchases are impulse buys. I see it, buy it, read it. It isn't that I don't have a big backlog--I do. But I will opt for something fresh if the mood hits me.

Impulse buys require impulse buy prices. If the work is expensive, I "Wishlist" the book and that is usually the end of it. If enough time passes (and it usually does) the Wishlist gets cleaned out and nothing gets purchased. That's how it has been recently.

Economists will tell you that the supply/demand curve is, well, a curve. I suspect it is much more like a step function for eBook prices--one with a steep drop-off.

-- Scott

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by TallMomof2

I think you're on to something. There must be more money to be made from very casual readers who are willing to pay a higher price since book purchases make up a small part of their budgets. Most of my friends read, at most, a book every couple of months and are amazed at how much I read.

Yeah, in the mainstream its the casuals that really drive sales.

For instance, in video games the Madden football games don't sell like gang busters every year because the hardcore gamers posting on game forums all run out and buy it. They're a small part of it, most of the multi-million sales are to casual gamers who buy a few games a year and Madden is always one of them.

Now smaller game developers are more dependent on the hardcore gamers, as they're putting out games the casuals will never hear of much less buy.

Publishing is the same way. The Big publishers publishing big name authors like Brown, Grisham, King etc. don't care so much about the die hard book worms on sites like this. They get the vast majority of sales from the casuals who buy a couple big mainstream releases a year.

Whereas the smaller publishers are more dependent on the avid readers and cater more to them.

[KarateMonkey]

We had actually already curtailed a lot of our ebook buying before the switch since my wife got laid off in March. The couple books we have bought, were part of series that we're very interested in, and pretty much without exception they were a royal pain to get. The publisher moved the release date back twice on one that we pre-ordered, and then it still wasn't available for at BOB when it was supposed to be. Two others were either unavialable on their release date or unavialable at all in the stores where I've got credit built up.

There have been a couple others that I would have bought, if I could. "The Big Short," by Michael Lewis would have been a total impulse buy for anything under $20, if it had been available as an ebook. I bought "The Greatest Trade Ever" instead. I've been wanting to buy the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson since I finished the free copy of "Warbreaker" he put out on his website, but until I can use up some credit at FW, BOB, or the Sony story, I'm not getting any of those.

The publishers apparently believe I need to get to work on my backlog.

[toomanybooks]

In the past two days I have read about four books and wanted to buy them immediately as ebooks. When I went to purchase them all of them were priced over 10 dollars and didn't buy them. I can't bring myself to pay an inflated price for an ebook. The high prices turned an impulse buy into a considered purchase and nothing got bought. Either my library had it or I decided that I could wait. If the books had been priced under ten dollars I wouldn't have thought twice about buying them. How many impulse purchases are publishers losing to make a few extra dollars per sale?

[Common Sense]

The agency model really pissed me off! If I can't sell, lend, or give an ebook away like I can a physical book, why should I pay anywhere close to the same price? When I saw the prices rising, I notified two of the publishers and let them know that I will not be purchasing any books from them, unless used through a 3rd party or a library sale. That way, the seller makes a profit, I get a book for cheap, and the author and publisher are screwed.

While I wait for my favorite books to show up as used, I'm starting to read the indie and free books that I've collected. So far, I've enjoyed every one of them and even purchased other books by the same authors. These are books I would have never been exposed to if I didn't have a Kindle, even if I did see them on a shelf at the local store.

I love my Kindle and find myself reading a lot more than I used to, and a lot wider range of genres and authors than I used to. Publishers should think about that and authors should think about cutting out the middle man and self-publishing. Authors want to reach their readers and publishers are just getting in the way.

[Musicman]

I have bought less.

I refuse to buy any books over $9.99, but even hesitate at that (First I check the library).

[Elfwreck]

Hasn't affected my spending at all; I don't buy DRM, and all the agency publishers are DRM-only.

[fjtorres]

Zero ebooks, zero p-books from the price-fix five.
All my recent buys are from other publishers.
Most of my reading is coming from my backlog.

As to whether the extra profit from the price-insensitive light readers will make up for driving heavy readers away, I'd suggest that it won't take long to tell.
Quarterly sales and profit reports will tell.

[FlorenceArt]

I haven't bought a lot of e-books recently, but the agency model has little to do with it. First, it only applies to English language books. French e-books were already overpriced and that hasn't changed Also, English-language new releases had mostly stopped being available to me because of geographical restrictions anyway. I did make a few purchases in non-geo restricted stores, at a slightly higher price than FW or BoB.

I wouldn't buy an e-book at $25, but for new releases it doesn't really bother me, because it was the same with paper books. I hate hardbacks and almost never buy them. Waiting for the paperback or waiting for the price to drop isn't very different - provided the price does drop, and that has been my main gripe with prices so far. In France, books that are available in paperback (sometimes have been for more than 10 years) are sold at the price of a first edition, and they even have the nerve to claim that we are saving money, because the e-book is a few cents cheaper (than the most expensive edition of course, not compared to the paperback)

Another thing that is keeping me from buying is the DRM hurdle. French books are mostly available in Adobe ePub, and I still haven't figured out how to install ADE and register it, let alone strip the DRM. In itself it shouldn't be such a problem (I could figure it out if I tried hard enough), but combined with the outrageous prices, forget it, I'd rather download free books.

[KenFisher]

I have purchased a similar number of books since the switch. That is because I have always purchased the monthly offering from Baen and my eMagazines from Fictionwise (they are DRM-free). I stopped purchasing DRMed books several months ago while I worked out the procedures to free them from their chains. Once I have completed that I think that the purchases will return to the level I was buying them six months ago (which was double current levels).

Ken

[CyberSmoke53]

I have purchased fewer.. Mostly I purchased from Fictionwise, but now their store looks like a ghost town. Most of my favorite author's books are NO LONGER ON SALE or just GONE!!! Some of the books have reappeared at the Barnes and Nobles ebook store. I have only bought 1 book because it was a new release (and was a little on sale because of pre-release sales) and a couple of my favorite author's backlist books also purchased at a pre-release sale at discount from BN because Fictionwise no longer has this author's newest releases available.

Like another OP above I am reading less and updating my scripting/python skills for some educational reformatting practice exercises..

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by CyberSmoke53

Like another OP above I am reading less and updating my scripting/python skills for some educational reformatting practice exercises..

[bgalbrecht]

I think the ebook market is predominately the high volume book buyers, unlike, perhaps the print markets. Most people don't buy a $250+ reader if they're only going to buy/read 5-10 books a year. If the Agency publisher are good on their word, and drop the ebook prices when the book's been available for a while, they are cherry-picking the buyers who can't wait for the price drop, just like the hardcover buyers.