They can afford to sell those books at that price because other books are being sold at higher hardcover prices.
They can afford to take on brand new authors where it's too risky to release them immediately in hardcover but it's worth giving a paperback release a try because of the higher margins on hardcover books.
You did read the actual releases from Macmillan, right? The ones that discussed windowing? And that they were explicitly willing to offer books at no-more-than-9.99 if Amazon would accept said windowing, to avoid cannibalizing hardcover sales? You know. The hardcover sales that let them take a risk on putting out those direct-to-paperback novels. A large percentage of which never actually sell through sufficiently to cover what it cost to put them out, much less make a profit.
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They can afford to take on brand new authors where it's too risky to release them immediately in hardcover but it's worth giving a paperback release a try because of the higher margins on hardcover books.
You did read the actual releases from Macmillan, right? The ones that discussed windowing? And that they were explicitly willing to offer books at no-more-than-9.99 if Amazon would accept said windowing, to avoid cannibalizing hardcover sales? You know. The hardcover sales that let them take a risk on putting out those direct-to-paperback novels. A large percentage of which never actually sell through sufficiently to cover what it cost to put them out, much less make a profit.