I heard that Walmart is starting to sell first-run hardcovers for nine bucks as a draw to get people in the store; Amazon obviously feels they need to match 'em.
Edit: er, or it’s a pre-order price war between the two of 'em. Something like that.
I was hearing on NPR that there is some sort of bizarre price war happening right now with books. Take advantage while you can.
H.
Yeah, and Target is now getting in on that action, too. There was a piece on NPR the other day about this price war, and how it was probably going to kill book sale profits this year and end up being a bad thing for all parties involved.
On the other hand, yay! Cheap books!
It’s not a bad thing for the authors/publishers, assuming they’re still selling them at their normal wholesale price, and Amazon/Walmart/etc are selling them at a loss. It’s the distributors and bookstores that are gonna get hammered by this.
I’m guessing that the price war is a result of Amazon’s prices for bestsellers on the Kindle.
Cheap books will encourage more buying, I know I’m gonna snap one up.
Only after you train people to buy books should you worry about how much you can make off them. One hundred percent profit on a book still equals zero if you can’t get someone to buy it.
I like the concept of this book and the cover. That’s one thing I’ve always liked about King, regardless of the inconsistency of his writing he always seems willing to experiment in various ways with presentation. That factor alone is enough to keep me buying his books. I’m still working my way through his last short story collection, I’m waiting till I finish all of it before I watch the included dvd(another intriguing touch).
I don’t want to be doom saying or anything… but this sort of thing is probably the beginning of the “end” of print books. It looks like prices are being driven down to compete with eBooks, only with a much smaller profit margin. The publishing houses are probably going to start seriously looking at digital distribution as a primary solution rather than a secondary in order to drive their profits back up.
But hey, on the bright side, less paper used might be good for our ability to keep living on the planet (I won’t say its good for the planet because the planet is highly likely to outlast humanity).
One of the other stories behind this is the fact that it’s not being released in ebook format until almost a month later. This has some people pissed off.
The only thing (imo) that ebooks will truly kill are paperbacks, which is really the market they intend to replace. I definitely think there will always be a market for hardbound books.
What’s that quote from? It’s idiotic.
The post above mine?
I just read a description of the plot–it sounds like a complete ripoff of a novel I read several years ago, about (IIRC) a midwestern or plains-state town that suddenly finds itself enclosed in a force bubble. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title at the moment.
The Simpsons Movie?
Man, what am I, a guy that reads threads?
Anyway, yeah… that’s not what’s going to happen.
Well it was partially my fault for not attributing my quote, which I went and did after you asked. :)
I already had it on pre-order from Amazon so this is cool. Kinda sucks for all those people going to the Under the Dome meet and greet events with Stephen King that have to pay $35 for the book at the show in order to get him to sign it. Apparently he’s not signing anything other than new books from the show.
Sears has jumped in too, offering $9 off any books you order from them with your receipt for a $9 book from the other competitors.
King’s book is 1000 pages. It’s been a long time since he wrote anything that remotely interested me. I tried to read From a Buick 6. It was awful. In other words, give me some good $9 books!
I’ll imagine it was - the one I got was From a Buick 8 and it wasn’t that great and it was 2 bigger.
I’m kind of shocked that they’re selling hardcovers for $9.00. And annoyed. Because I don’t have enough bookshelves or the time to read these things.
I’m sure there will, just like there is still a market for vinyl records. There will always be people who have libraries in their homes, or who just love the feel of the hardbound book in their hands, but there are also tons of people who only buy hardbound because to not buy it is to risk having the book spoiled while you wait for the paperback. If Stephen King put out a new book in paperback first, and no hardbound edition, the number of books sold probably wouldn’t change… in fact they might even go up with the lower cost. Despite CDs being lower quality, it didn’t stop them from being the dominant form once the hardware got more common, just as digital downloads are now impacting CD sales.
eBooks are still new to most people, the hardware isn’t common enough or cheap enough to dominate yet, but with B&N entering the market with the Nook, the competition is finally getting into place for hardware prices to drop… $259 is still just too high for lots of people. If they get it down to $199 I think they see a lot more people jump on the bandwagon.
I have absolutely no numbers to back up my claim, but I’m going to guess that The Colorado Kid counters your argument. Except Cemetery Dance may have done a special edition. It would have been after the paperback, though.
The Colorado Kid sold poorly because it was not a good book. I don’t believe it being in paperback was the real problem.