Not really, sure we can resell a physical book, however the owner of the license of that book could demand that you recycle the book before you sell it, just like if I gave you a VHS tape of a show that I owned and said "erase the tape before you sell it at a garage sale or pawn shop).
It kind of feels like Trek fans get gouged.
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Not really, sure we can resell a physical book, however the owner of the license of that book could demand that you recycle the book before you sell it, just like if I gave you a VHS tape of a show that I owned and said "erase the tape before you sell it at a garage sale or pawn shop).
No, copyright owners don't have any right to tell you what you can do with books and VHS tapes once you've bought them. Their rights to control how you use a book or a VHS tape end the moment you bought it. This is called First Sale Doctrine. "Once the work is lawfully sold or even transferred gratuitously, the copyright owner's interest in the material object in which the copyrighted work is embodied is exhausted. The owner of the material object can then dispose of it as he sees fit."
Trade paperbacks fall into a different marketing niche, and often get displayed in shops differently. A prestige format that puts it a gift-buying demographic. The author also gets a bigger royalty cut on a trade, and then another bite at the cherry when the MMPB reprint comes along.
You're using both "value" and "demand" as synonyms, when they're two only-tangentially-related concepts.
With a musical, no matter the demand, you have a fixed supply. So it makes sense to jack up the price as high as the market will bear - as long as you don't put the price higher than what a full house values the tickets at, you're good.
Books have an effectively inexhaustible supply. If there's more demand than there are copies in the initial printing, then the sensible answer isn't "jack the price up", it's "print and sell more copies". (And with ebooks, you can even skip the "print" stage.)
Because the supply is unlimited, the publisher needs to pick the price point for the ebooks which they think will maximize their profit - weighing lower copies sold vs. higher profits at the higher price point. It's entirely possible that the dropoff in copies sold will be low enough where they make more money at the higher price point. But there's no way to prove that with hard data, without access to parallel universes for A/B testing - at best it would be a WAG on S&S's part. And if they really thought that was the case, the entire Star Trek line would be TPB priced.
Another reason publishers might opt to put out a book in trade paperback rather than MMPB is that the NY Times no longer tracks MMPBs for its bestseller lists. It does, however, track and report on trade paperbacks. So if a publisher thinks that a title might have a reasonable shot at making the NYT list, they might reasonably choose to produce the work in trade paperback rather than in MMPB.
Again your wrong. If in the language of the contract it is stated that the material in question is licensed, then you the consumer do not own, and do not have any rights under the First Sale Doctrine. (section 109d of the US First Sale law)
If you look at any VHS, CD, DVD or Blu Ray, you will find somewhere on the packaing "Licensed for non-commercial use only. Public Broadcasting is prohibited" or some such wording. Thus the copyright owner has told you that you may not buy that VHS tape or CD with the intention of re-selling it to a TV station or radio or uploading it to the internet. Even in Pocket's Star Trek books, on the copyright page they spell out that you can not scan electronically, or photocopy or retransmit on the internet any part of the book without Pocket's permission.
So if you bought a VHS from me, and I put right on the VHS "Licensed for single play only and then must be erased", then you the purchaser would have to erase the tape after the one play through, otherwise you would be in violation of the license.
But that doesn't mean you can't re-sell it to a used-video store for resale to an individual customer. Go find your nearest Half Price Books -- they have used DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, vinyl records, cassettes, etc. along with used books, magazines, comics, toys, etc. The rules that prohibit unlicensed broadcast do not prohibit one individual from selling the item to another individual, whether directly or through an intermediate vendor.
Trades seem to be more popular here in Ireland going by the several bookshops I've been into. For example, Lee Child and Ian Rankin novels get published in Hardback back home in the UK, but when they were released here at the same time, they were Trades. - I rather like this as I prefer Trades myself over Hardbacks.
I'm not wasting my time on this anymore. I'm out.
Well, yes. And if they think the audience will be willing to pay a higher price for a book and that the drop-off in number of sales won't be large enough to decrease overall profits, then their logic is sound.
Or taking an educated guess based upon similar circumstances in other book lines.
True. But it also means that, using the VHS tape as an example, if in the License it is stated that the tape must be erased or sold as a blank tape, then you must sell it as a blank tape. Just like with physical books a copyright holder could put in the license that the book be resold as blank paper.
Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon. You're just making stuff up now. The "blank paper" analogy is bizarre and obviously impossible.
I'd like to contribute some thoughts about what "trade paperback" really means, and why they are preferred both by retailers and publishers (and certainly this author). It's not all about the size of the book, or the price. It's the trade terms.
Mass market paperbacks, as most know, were designed for a newsstand age where space was at a premium and consumer targeting was very poor. Publishers blasted out vast numbers of copies, printing several to sell one, just as they did with comics before comics shops. Retailers, many of whom did not really track their clientele or their interests, simply destroyed unsold copies, stripping their covers and sending them back for credit. It was the buckshot approach. The amount of waste was astonishing.
With the newsstand declining in prominence and the Waldenbooks of the world giving way to larger-footprint stores, mass market paperbacks were no longer as good a deal for the business. Because the discounts are tiny to account for all the wasted copies that have to be printed, the retailer makes very little per mass-market paperback -- not much of a reward for connecting a book with a customer. The trade paperback was the solution. They're larger and more durable, so when returnable copies go unsold, they're not stripped; they're returned as whole copies for resale elsewhere, just as hardcovers are. The discounts are thus better for retailers, explaining why you'll see Amazon offering better deals on them, percentage-wise, than for MMPBs, which usually don't go below 10% off. There are also trade paperbacks that are sold non-returnably (as almost 100% of the comics and graphic novels sold to comics shops are): these represent the best deal for publisher and retailer, as the discounts are usually higher. And, thus, the consumer, who's that much more likely to be offered a discount.
The mass-market paperback age isn't over, but the math works better for the higher-end format, especially now in the digital era: the print purchaser is much more likely than before to be someone interested in a higher quality, more durable physical package. The number of mass market paperbacks produced annually has collapsed relative to other formats, as has the number of rack spaces for them. And the MMPBs that remain are seeing changes to make them make more sense for publishers and retailers: the canon Star Wars mass market paperbacks are now all those $10 tall editions, which give the retailers more reason to stock and sell them.
In general, I support as many options as are feasible to offer, though I understand why all aren't out at the same time; the hardcover first run is to the paperback second-run as the theatrical release is to the discount second-run house. The early audiences are by definition the most motivated, and likeliest to be interested in the better formats. Maybe we'll see a TPB to MMPB model in this case, maybe not. We'll have to see what shakes out.
Mass market paperbacks, as most know, were designed for a newsstand age where space was at a premium and consumer targeting was very poor. Publishers blasted out vast numbers of copies, printing several to sell one, just as they did with comics before comics shops. Retailers, many of whom did not really track their clientele or their interests, simply destroyed unsold copies, stripping their covers and sending them back for credit. It was the buckshot approach. The amount of waste was astonishing.
With the newsstand declining in prominence and the Waldenbooks of the world giving way to larger-footprint stores, mass market paperbacks were no longer as good a deal for the business. Because the discounts are tiny to account for all the wasted copies that have to be printed, the retailer makes very little per mass-market paperback -- not much of a reward for connecting a book with a customer. The trade paperback was the solution. They're larger and more durable, so when returnable copies go unsold, they're not stripped; they're returned as whole copies for resale elsewhere, just as hardcovers are. The discounts are thus better for retailers, explaining why you'll see Amazon offering better deals on them, percentage-wise, than for MMPBs, which usually don't go below 10% off. There are also trade paperbacks that are sold non-returnably (as almost 100% of the comics and graphic novels sold to comics shops are): these represent the best deal for publisher and retailer, as the discounts are usually higher. And, thus, the consumer, who's that much more likely to be offered a discount.
The mass-market paperback age isn't over, but the math works better for the higher-end format, especially now in the digital era: the print purchaser is much more likely than before to be someone interested in a higher quality, more durable physical package. The number of mass market paperbacks produced annually has collapsed relative to other formats, as has the number of rack spaces for them. And the MMPBs that remain are seeing changes to make them make more sense for publishers and retailers: the canon Star Wars mass market paperbacks are now all those $10 tall editions, which give the retailers more reason to stock and sell them.
In general, I support as many options as are feasible to offer, though I understand why all aren't out at the same time; the hardcover first run is to the paperback second-run as the theatrical release is to the discount second-run house. The early audiences are by definition the most motivated, and likeliest to be interested in the better formats. Maybe we'll see a TPB to MMPB model in this case, maybe not. We'll have to see what shakes out.
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I once visited a site that no author should ever see. It was a wholesale distribution center in Florida where mass-market books were being stripped and pulped on an assembly line. It was the abbatoir of author's dreams.
I once visited a site that no author should ever see. It was a wholesale distribution center in Florida where mass-market books were being stripped and pulped on an assembly line. It was the abbatoir of author's dreams.
Supposedly, it is cheaper to print more than required, then pulp the returns and leftovers and do a whole new print run sometime in the future, than to pay for longterm storage of the first batch.
I once visited a site that no author should ever see. It was a wholesale distribution center in Florida where mass-market books were being stripped and pulped on an assembly line. It was the abbatoir of author's dreams.
When I worked in a bookstore I had an employee who liked to place books he wanted at the cash wrap so they would become worn and dog eared and had to be stripped.On the other hand, I still remember an "erotic" paperback novel that bore on its cover the unfortunate tag-line: "Strip me!"
You never put "Strip me!" on the cover of a mass-market book!
He also had a great comeback to a customer who saw him stripping some books ( romance titles). She looked shocked and said. "Don't do that, books are your friends.". With out missing a beat he responded "No, these books are not my friends.".
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Was there a publisher who tried making MMPBs returnable (in recent years)? Nowadays you have MMPBs being shipped from online sellers to customer homes, and they make it reasonably intact. It seems to me like bookstores should be able to arrange for return shipping to publishers with a similar or better success rate.
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