(no subject)

[coraa]

I would love, love, love it if publishers would offer bundles of ebook and paper book. Like—I'm making up numbers, bear with me—if a paperback is $8 and the ebook version is $6, I'd pay $12 for both the paper copy and a download link. If a hardcover is $20 and the ebook is $10, I'd pay $26 for both. Like that.

I wonder why no big presses have done that. Perhaps they think they can get people to pay full price for both? But that doesn't seem like it'd happen very often.

Comments

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

Why? As in, what is the benefit to you, that you're willing to pay more for it?

I'm hazarding a guess that whatever the benefit is, it has a fairly narrow monetary value range. You might not be buying as many of the non-combo pairs as you would be if they were offered as a combo discount. Is it fair to say then, that you believe the publishers would make up in volume what they would lose in straight out revenue per unit?

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I read on my Kindle and in paper format in different ways and situations. The Kindle goes with me when I travel, and also gets tucked in my bag when I leave the house in case I run into an unexpected delay where I'd like something on hand to read. I also read it around the house, sometimes. Paper books I like for reading in the bath and other situations where they might get messy (reading while stirring a pot of soup or spaghetti sauce for dinner, for instance), and also so I can hand it to my boyfriend to read, lend to a friend, whatever. It's not worth paying full price twice, but it's worth a certain amount of money to be able to switch back and forth from electronic to paper.

I don't know whether it would actually make any sense, financially, to the publisher, but I suspect I am not the only person who would like to have the book in two formats but don't want to pay full price twice. (At very least other people on my flist seem to agree.) If that's the case, the publisher has the potential to turn one $20 sale into a $25 sale, or one $8 sale into a $12 sale, thus getting more $$ out of a customer who would otherwise not give them any more money for a particular book.

But I don't know if it would make sense to them, as I'm not an expert in the finances of publishing. It would just be nifty for me.