I’ve got “Sins of Commission” by Susan Wright in both it’s original MMPB format and it’s TP format from a few years ago and it’s clear that S&S just magnified everything to fit the TP size page, since all the art and words, both on the cover and on the interior pages are fuzzy, just like you would get if you had photocopied a newspaper article and blown it up by 25 or 50%. There’s no way that S&S rescanned the original artwork or re-typeset the text for TP standards.
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Trade paperbacks are often preferred by those with failing eyesight, because the font is often bigger and the page-size more suitable.
Trades also became popular for gift-giving when first introduced. They look more impressive than MMPBs, which many still think of as disposable.
When I was working, I would always have an MMPB in my jacket pocket to read whilst commuting or during my lunch break.
Same here. It was rare to see me without a book. My ebook reader has now mostly taken over that role now though.
I just moved onto ebooks a few years ago. I can control the size of the font to make reading more comfortable.
I've never liked TPB. I don't like the layout or the size. They don't fit well in bookshelves. And to get them to fit, you need to have extra high shelves. And then there is the higher price.
The price of pBooks is based on the container. I get that. That's how it's always been. eBooks should not have the prices set so high because the container has not changed. The $7.99 Star Trek eBook is the exact same container as the $11.99 eBook. For those that feel that $11.20 (at B&N) for a Star Trek book is too expensive. Keep the eBooks at $7.99 and I bet a lot more eBooks would be sold.
One place where MMPB should be sold is the airport. You do not want a larger TPB or HC as they are larger and heavier. So MMPB is better for when someone wants to buy a book to read on the plane.
You'd sell a lot less TPB's, which would cut into profit margins.
So? Whether or not you personally like something is irrelevant to the question of whether there's a market for it. This conversation is about publishers' reasons for shifting away from MMPBs, and that's about buyers overall, not any single person's preferences.
eBooks are much better then pBooks for those who need to have the text larger. With my Kobo Aura H2O, I have a lot of different sizes for the text from too small to very large. I have many more choices of text size then you get on a Kindle. So for those who do need larger text to see better would be best off with a Reader with at least a 7" screen.
There are a lot of people out there that don't want TPB because they will not pay the increased price and they won't hae as much storage to store them since they are too large (IMHO).
Good luck having a TPB in your pocket.
Given that a lot of people read eBooks, you'd sell a lot more eBooks at a lower price point and that could bring more profits.
Good luck having a TPB in your pocket.
You're still not getting that, as far as the industry overall is concerned, the comparison isn't MMPBs vs. trades, but MMPBs vs. e-books. The reason MMPBs are a dying format is because people these days have e-book readers and other devices in their pockets, so e-books have taken the place of MMPBs in terms of price and convenience. As Greg explained before, trade paperbacks have always been targeted at a different, slightly more upscale market than MMPBs, so they're not seen as competing formats.
Now, Pocket could have responded to the decline of MMPBs by making a lateral move and switching to publishing Trek novels exclusively as e-books, but instead they chose to switch them to the more upscale trade format rather than give up on print formats altogether. (It was either that or hardcovers.) Note that there are now fewer books per year, which helps balance out the price increase.
Do you have evidence to back that up? If they lower the price by 25%, how much would that increase sales? 25%? 50%? 100%? What's your evidence that it would increase sales even 1%?
There is none. The argument that e-books should be cheaper because they are not printed is moot because the paper part is a very small fraction of the overall cost of the book. But still with e-books, the publisher’s need to format the book to work with the different e-reader formats, like Kindle, Kobo, Apple iBook, etc. So the cost that would be saved with not printing on paper, is spent on the digital printing. But otherwise e-books have the same costs as physical books.
The same reason that downloads of audio and video are only marginally less than the physical. The cost of actually manufacturing the physical product is a very small part of the overall cost.
I don't know. I still bring physical books and magazines onto planes, but I'm a dinosaur. Last several times I've flown, I've noticed that most of my fellow passengers are using devices instead: they're working on their laptops, watching movies on screens, or reading books on their phones and tablets. Increasingly, I'm one of the few passengers who is actually reading a paperback or newspaper.
Point being, airport sales of physical books may not be an issue much longer. As Christopher keeps pointing out, this isn't about MM paperbacks versus TPBs. It's about ebooks replacing mass-market paperbacks.
If eBooks have taken the place of MMPB in terms of price, why is it that Star Trek eBooks are priced at TPB prices (other then those on sale)?
You don't go by % off. I've read of a lot of people who won't buy past a certain price point. $7.99 and $9.99 were two price points I've read about. The question that needs to be asked is how are sales at the higher price then sales at $7.99? Only S&S have the answer.
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For Star Trek eBooks, all S&S has to do is create a single ePub and that ePub is then the master for converting to Kindle. You don't have to convert for Apple or any others.
How come the eBook that takes the very same work to make previously was $7.99 when Star Trek was mostly MMPB and now that it's trade, why is the price $11.99 for the same eBook formats and for the same work? That's because the eBook price is based on the price of the PB. That's just silly when the eBook is really no different priced at $11.99 then it is priced at $7.99.
The other problem is that the TPB is allowed to be discounted and the eBook is not allowed to be discounted. At Amazon (US), the latest Star Trek TPB is $10.39 and the eBook is $11.99. The TPB costs more to produce as there is the cost of the materials to print (paper, ink, glue), the cost to for a print run, and the cost to ship to the stores. The eBook once done just gets uploaded where it needs. The eBook is (overall) cheaper to make. So why is it the eBook price is higher? Because the eBook is not allowed to be discounted or priced according to the fact that it's overall cheaper to make in order to boost the sales of the TPB. As was said in a previous post, videos are cheaper to buy in electronic form then on Blu-Ray because the costs for the electronic file are cheaper and that difference is passed onto the customer. Same difference here except S&S would prefer to sell more TPB then eBooks.
Yes eBooks are replacing MMPB sort of. But not at the MMPB price point. eBooks are being charged at the price point for HC or TPB. So that really doesn't make them a MMPB replacement.
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You keep ignoring the point that these are two different subjects. One is a larger industry trend that has nothing to do with Star Trek books. The other is how Pocket/Gallery has chosen to react to that larger trend with regard to ST books. As I said, they could have gone to e-books only, but instead they chose to reorient the publishing line toward trades. Remember, there have been Star Trek trade paperbacks for a long time, just mostly anthologies and omnibus volumes. So the Trek TPB line was already around alongside the MMPB line. So with MMPBs gone, that leaves the existing TPB model, which they chose to retain as the new home for original novels.
As for the price issue, you'd have to ask someone more aware of the business details. But I assume it has to do with what people said above, that the difference in production cost between print and electronic books is minimal. The reasons for setting TPB prices higher than MMPB prices would apply just as much to the e-book releases of books that were created to be TPBs. Trades are generally longer, bigger books. They're more prominently marketed, more of a prestige item. There are fewer of them per year. I'd assume that all factors in to determining their market value.
Again, though, it's not a one-to-one comparison. MMPBs are on the shelves for a short time before having to be sent back, while TPBs stick around longer and thus can build sales more gradually. Also, once again, there are fewer of them per year. If they cost, say, 1.5 times as much but come out only 2/3 as often, then that cancels out and the cost for a year's worth of them is the same.
I don't think it is the same, not on the production or business end. The reason customers have to pay for products is to pay the salaries of all the people involved in creating them. Those salaries are based on their work for the company overall, and Trek books are just one tiny, tiny part of what Gallery (aka Pocket) Books publishes. So the prices that are set for TPB publishing would be about what TPBs are worth on the market overall. Again, there have been Trek TPBs for a long time, and they've always been more expensive than MMPBs.
Again, you're confusing Trek books with the entire industry. If you look outside of Trek, e-books are generally priced lower than trades. For instance, the e-book edition of my original novel Only Superhuman is priced at $7.99, the price of its MMPB release, even though it was barely out in MMPB for a few months before they remaindered them all. And you can find plenty of other novels at discounted prices on Kindle or Nook or whatever. For instance, the first book in The Expanse series is currently on Kindle for $9.99 marked down from the print list price of $17, and you can find other novels for 2-3 bucks. If Gallery/S&S won't discount Trek e-books, that's specific to them, and it's a separate issue from the industry-wide reasons why MMPBs are a dying format.
Sorry, but that’s not representative of the market. I just checked “Captain Marvel” on iTunes Canada and it is $24.99 to own ($5.99 to rent). On Amazon.ca the same movie on Blu-Ray with Digital Code is $24.96. While it may seem that digital files should be cheaper they are not. Even audio albums I tend to buy on CD more than digital as the CD is usually cheaper. You have to remember that with mass market titles like Star Trek and Captain Marvel, the publishers are making thousands of copies and they usually get a discount on orders (in terms of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray probably also applies to book publishing as well) of more than 5000 copies. Whereas when you are talking about low runs of say 1 or 2 copies (like when I convert someone’s parent’s wedding video from Betamax to Digital or DVD) then you are able to see a little savings with file only (of course I always have the option of just charging the one price for both just digital and just DVD).
But then there’s also another elephant in this discussion and that’s inflation. Back catalogue digital files, the publisher may not change the price for years as they can’t be bothered to go back every month to change the price, but new titles are more because that’s the price now due to inflation.
A lot of Trek novels that would have been hardcovers are now trade PBs instead, so much cheaper! And Gallery trades tend to be shorter and thinner that Pocket hardcovers of old.
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