"Cutting into sales" is rather nebulous though. After all, a sale is a sale. And ebooks, with higher margins, are the sales you should be preferring to make, no?
Think about it. You will sell, say, 10k copies between paper and pixels. Every ebook sold is one less paper copy - very direct "eating of sales".
If the ebook earns you the publisher the same revenue as the hardcover... then why do you CARE about "cannibalized sales"?
Taking our hardcover, where we determined that $6.50 is going to the publisher. With the 45% scheme, that's $6.75 for the publisher per ebook.
At this point, as a publisher, I would PREFER people buy the ebook over the hardcover, as I'm getting an extra 25 cents each. Please, Kindle, eat my sales, I come out on top!
Over 10k sales, that's an extra $2500 coming in to the publisher over traditional sales. Even if I printed a full run and not a single hardcover sold, I'm still ahead of the game.
That's eating my sales the same way a cow eats grass and turns it into steak.
Even then, delayed releases (as mentioned) can help alleviate this. NetFlix has started it with Warner new releases. Anything new from Warner won't be available on NetFlix for 30 days after DVD release. The purpose of this is to allow a sales window for the DVDs.
I'd love to see prices go down, but so far with ebooks they aren't. As some people have pointed out, in many cases the ebook costs more than the paperback, which is just silly.
$4 would be a sweet spot for me as well. Publishers would be making as much on those as they do on paperbacks, and oh boy would there be a buying frenzy. $4 is under the magic $5 line, which makes it a VERY easy impulse buy. It's less than a lot of people's starbucks orders. But $15? Too much, the number is "big" and for that much, you can frequently get a physical product of something with comparable "subjective value" like a DVD. Amazon's $10 mark was pretty good.
But yeah. $4 is my target. Or, as I said, $10 bundled with a paperback. I swear to the great pumpkin, they will generate an increase in sales if they go the bundle route.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-02-13 04:06 am (UTC)Think about it. You will sell, say, 10k copies between paper and pixels. Every ebook sold is one less paper copy - very direct "eating of sales".
If the ebook earns you the publisher the same revenue as the hardcover... then why do you CARE about "cannibalized sales"?
Taking our hardcover, where we determined that $6.50 is going to the publisher. With the 45% scheme, that's $6.75 for the publisher per ebook.
At this point, as a publisher, I would PREFER people buy the ebook over the hardcover, as I'm getting an extra 25 cents each. Please, Kindle, eat my sales, I come out on top!
Over 10k sales, that's an extra $2500 coming in to the publisher over traditional sales. Even if I printed a full run and not a single hardcover sold, I'm still ahead of the game.
That's eating my sales the same way a cow eats grass and turns it into steak.
Even then, delayed releases (as mentioned) can help alleviate this. NetFlix has started it with Warner new releases. Anything new from Warner won't be available on NetFlix for 30 days after DVD release. The purpose of this is to allow a sales window for the DVDs.
I'd love to see prices go down, but so far with ebooks they aren't. As some people have pointed out, in many cases the ebook costs more than the paperback, which is just silly.
$4 would be a sweet spot for me as well. Publishers would be making as much on those as they do on paperbacks, and oh boy would there be a buying frenzy. $4 is under the magic $5 line, which makes it a VERY easy impulse buy. It's less than a lot of people's starbucks orders. But $15? Too much, the number is "big" and for that much, you can frequently get a physical product of something with comparable "subjective value" like a DVD.
Amazon's $10 mark was pretty good.
But yeah. $4 is my target. Or, as I said, $10 bundled with a paperback. I swear to the great pumpkin, they will generate an increase in sales if they go the bundle route.