The Problem With Brunner

As I'm getting ready to finish off Brunner, a collection of short stories set in the Warhammer Fantasy setting that features Brunner, a bounty hunter of no small prowess, I decided to do a quick snoop around the Black Library site to see if this was offered as an ebook.

No such luck.

I did however, look around at another series by the same author, the one about the Witch Hunter. Now when I read the series, I read it in a collected format that I bought either at Amazon.com for something like $11 or at Half-Price for something like $7.50 plus tax. So how does the Black Library decide to sell the series?

In individual book form only for $7.99.

So... buy all three books and pay more than you would if you bought the print collection at a brand new price with zero discount, or, well don't.

I think publishers still have a long way to go in terms of figuring out where they want to be, what they think the customer will pay, and how the customers behavior will influence them.

For myself, I would never buy an ebook for more than the price of the printed book, and this includes collected editions. If as a publisher you've already made enough money from the series that you decide to get another round of dollars from it by collecting the books into a collection and don't sell that in the same format as an ebook, you, as a publisher, are effectively telling your fans to buy the print version.

There is nothing wrong with that, but considering unless its a direct sale that most of the profits from sales of print books go to the various middlemen there as opposed to the ebook, that might not be the best way to make the money.

Ah well, let me finish off Brunner here and post some actual inspiration material as opposed to yet another ebook price rant.