Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
Joshua Dyal said:Not having read all the responses, it looks like most people are missing the original point; it's not that monkius can't afford to buy the books, it's that prices are now to the point where he's not impulse buying them the way he used to. That translates into less volume of material moved. Is the increase in price enough to offset that to turn the same profit? Probably not, because folks around here are saying that the price is a reflection of the cost of printing and distributing the book. It's entirely possible that the market is slowly dying if it's not priced to move impulse buyers anymore.
I think publishers are responding with price increases because the market is shrinking, not the other way around.
If you know you're pretty much going to sell 2000 units (to pick a mid-range number) no matter where you price it, then obviously you're better off trying to actually make a profit on those 2000 sales. There's so much product in the market right now, lowering the price isn't going to increase your sales with end-users.
So publishers are trying to raise that sell-through rate. That's why you are seeing the quality start to improve across the board. Of course, this is yet another reason that the price is going up. Some companies are actually-- GASP!-- hiring editors! And using decent quality artists!
Personally I think the price increases are a bit of long-overdue "boiling the frog." They'll go up, slowly but surely.
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