Has Hachette Forgotten How to Publish?
Hachette will increase backlist ebook prices by an average of 220% starting next month, according to an email from OverDrive released by Gary Price at InfoDocket. I cannot help but ask the same question of Hachette that I asked of Random House when it increased prices over 300% this past spring: And what?
Hachette is increasing backlist prices by 220% and … what? And we get ownership? And we get increased simultaneous lending? And we get anything other than another price gouge from a publisher that seems to not comprehend the basic fundamentals of publishing?
Let’s make this really easy to understand. Publishers publish content. Libraries buy content. As long as publishers keep publishing content, libraries will keep buying content. Why? Because libraries buy content. Only we buy it from a relatively fixed budget.
By drastically increasing the price of backlist titles, all Hachette is doing is reducing the funding that can go towards purchasing its new titles.
