Random House has decided that fucking over libraries is in their best financial interest. Apparently tripling prices protects the company from the "perpetuity of lending."
I don't think the RH execs take into account that there's lots of folks, like me, who use the library as a testing grounds for new authors. If we love a book, we'll go out and buy it to read again and again. If we love an author, we'll buy their whole freaking catalog. By tripling prices (and the odds are high the other big publishing houses will quickly follow suit), libraries will buy fewer and fewer books. That leads to fewer writers being exposed to new readers. Which cuts into the publishers' bottom line because fewer books are being bought by the readers and/or recommended to the readers' friends and families. Which in turn takes a bite out of the publisher's profits...
I feel like I just gave Yoda's speech from The Phantom Menace.
At the other end of the spectrum, Smashwords just signed a deal with Baker & Taylor, a print and e-book distributor. What does this mean? Indies have the opportunity to get into more libraries! Yes! *fist pump*
Goddess, I love this business!!
Publishing houses need to get a clue! It's one reason I don't understand Amazon's reasoning for becoming a print book publisher...
ReplyDelete@Tess, there's still a lot of people who buy print books, me included. Amazon's philosophy has always been that they will provide almost anything to anybody. Amazon's no longer just an online bookstore, but more like an online department store.
ReplyDeleteThe publishers don't get that publishing is a micro-fraction of Amazon's overall business. And Amazon looks at the print side of their publishing arm as simply giving the customer what they want.
I'm having a love affair with Amazon. Since my first release last May, I have fallen more and more in love with them. Yeah, I will admit, if they didn't throw money in my account every month I wouldn't love them quite as much, but they sell 5 times more of my books than B&N and I don't even bother to check SW and their distribution channels any more . I recently "opted out" across the board for one title I hope to add to the KDP select program. Of course, it will take them several weeks (or months) to get the message filtered down to the other distributors. At least I took the first step.
ReplyDeleteAmazon has a huge business enterprise...I have a very tiny one by comparison. I'm just doing the same thing Amazon is doing: I'm making decisions every day to try and improve my current and future business. Heck! I want to be Amazon.
~J
@J.D. Good for you! Improving your business and making more money is always a worthwhile goal.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the big publishers shooting themselves in the foot with their anti-Amazon and anti-library stances only helps us indies in the long run.