

Simon & Schuster to delay eReleases four months from Hardcover publication  - AndrewWarner
http://www.examiner.com/x-12973-Long-Island-Books-Examiner~y2009m12d10-Simon--Schuster-to-delay-eReleases-four-months-from-Hardcover-publication

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cstross
To a publishing executive, this makes sense because ...

The traditional pattern of book-selling is a reverse auction.

First you sell the limited edition short print run signed gilt-trimmed
hardcover. (Optional.) $35

Then you sell the regular hardcover. (Optional.) $25, discount to $16.

Then you sell the trade paperback. (Optional.) $16, discount to $10.

Then you sell the mass-market paperback. (Optional only if you're a small
press.) $8, discount to $5.

If it's a mega-bestseller, then you sell the cheap MMPB edition, discount down
to $3 in quantities of 100K and up.

 _Each of these steps occurs in sequence_ , typically 6 or 12 months apart.
Some or all may be ommitted -- most books only go through 2, sometimes 3 of
these stages -- but the general pattern is that the price comes down as the
early adopters are soaked up by the expensive editions.

It's an established business model and it worked in the traditional book
business because books effectively come with built-in DRM; who in their right
mind borrows a hardcover and photocopies it?

If you read HN I'm going to take it as read (heh) that you understand why this
model is fundamentally broken when you try to apply it to soft goods, as
Hachette's execs seem to be bent on trying.

(Full disclosure: I am published by a Hachette subsidiary in the UK, and I'm
contractually required to not saw off the branch I'm sitting on.)

~~~
patio11
This is a particularly acute problem for booksellers because, against
everyone's expectations, their core audiences are taking to the Kindle in
droves. This leads to the ultimate nightmare for the market segmenter --
they're cannibalizing their best customers. It would be like if an enterprise
software company convinced their Fortune 500 clients to all sign up for their
self-service $9 a month SAAS plan.

~~~
cstross
Yes.

Most American households buy around 1 book a year.

Roughly 50% of books are sold to just 2-3% of the market.

There's a power law at work (with, admittedly, a cut-off at the high end). I
know quite a few folks who typically buy and read 50-150 novels a year. To
make a runaway best-seller, you need to reach out to the 1-book-a-year folks,
but to stay in business you've _got_ to keep the 50-books-a-year people happy,
because those are your core market.

Regularly reading fiction for entertainment is, these days, a niche market.

------
jameskilton
"We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic]
readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed
base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be
impossible."

Wow, that says it all about as succinctly as anyone can. I can't tell if this
is cluelessness or desperation.

------
blahedo
Mostly, it just means that people will go out and download the pirated copy
off the internet. Smooth move.

~~~
AndrewWarner
I don't think there's a pirate book community out there yet. Is there?

~~~
kqr2
Just check the torrents...

Also, people will often do translations of popular books (c.f Harry Potter)
before the publisher gets around to it.

------
AndrewWarner
What's frustrating about this is that, in a world where people are
increasingly less willing to pay for media, S&S found customers who 1) still
want to read books, and 2) are willing to pay for those books.

And now that they found that prized audience what they're doing is telling
them "Go away! Come back when we're ready for you."

------
jsz0
What a strangely convoluted business model they have discovered. Wouldn't it
make a lot more sense to sell the digital copy at a higher price initially? I
doubt many owners of e-book readers are interested in paper hardcovers
anymore. Isn't that sort of the point? They'll most likely just read something
else instead and _maybe_ in 4 months they'll remember and buy the S&S book
they were interested in.

This is an incredibly hostile move to S&S's new, or lesser known, authors who
depend on the first big wave of publicity and reviews to sell books. The well
known S&S authors will fare better but will probably still experience some
fallout. The bigger losers are S&S's best customers. The ones who buy lots of
books, stay up on new releases, and do tons of free marketing by recommending
books to friends & family.

------
preview
Is this really that much different from releasing the hard cover well before
the paperback version?

------
teilo
Yet another company with contempt for their customer base. "WE will tell you
what you want."

