She does a great job of talking to publishers:
Once upon a time, you had the power to decide pricing in the marketplace. Now it’s the customer, and the customer has all the power . . .[Sound of Maya applauding]
In the digital marketplace, books have to remain competitive with other media. It’s not so much your opinion of the value of your product that matters; it’s all about how the customer values your product. And, lordy, if you think they’re fired up by ebooks that cross the $10 threshold, you are not talking to real people who live real lives and buy stuff with real money.
Kassia points out what I've said before: Publishers need to reinvent their pricing model based on the new market.
Forget what it used to cost you to produce a physical book AND an ebook. What does it ACTUALLY cost you today to produce an ebook . . . without producing the p-book? That's the point from which you need to start.
Yes, you are going to continue to produce p-books, but begin thinking of ebooks as its own line of business. Start preparing NOW for initial print runs to shrink and to use POD technology to fill in after that initial run is exhausted. Let your readers decide whether they will fork over the additional money for a p-book or whether they want that cheaper ebook.
I was enormously entertained by one of the comments to Kassia's post where an anonymous onlooker talked about being stunned that a publisher would say "it only costs $2.50-$3.50 less to produce an ebook." The commenter said, "By that reasoning shouldn’t paperbacks cost $21 or so?"
Go here to read Kassia's post and be sure to read the comments, too.
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