I personally believe that there are salient differences between books (quality, time spent, book cover, number of pages, etc.) and having a big name publisher can open many opportunities for new authors just like in the music industry. I guess it would be more accurate to say that publishers can free up authors' time by using the publisher's resources for marketing and distribution, etc.
On a site like Hacker News, we take the success of product differentiation for granted. The best product will differentiate itself based on sound understanding of product development and will thus succeed. It would be unsafe to assume that business aspects are irrelevant.
First books/discovery is a bit of a commodity because they don't know who you are yet, same as new apps can be. But once a reader has come to enjoy your writing, they tend to be willing to pay more to keep enjoying your work.
A great example is several fantasy publishing houses have begun putting first ebooks in series on sale for 2.99 to lure people in and get them to pay full price for the rest of the series. I've already gotten hooked on one series this way.
I'm not the fastest reader and I don't devote more than probably an hour a day on average to long form reading so one book can keep me going for some time, I'm sure others that power through books in a day would feel differently about the high price point.
Be curious to see if that continues to play out, however.
I'm not certain that books ever competed on quality. A cursory glance at the NY Times best-seller list of the past few years seems to indicate that quality isn't a [major] factor. Unless you somehow consider Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, Twilight, and so on, to somehow be the paragon of quality literature.
The Da Vinci Code keeps a frenetic pace that makes "quality" secondary, and quite difficult to achieve. (I would submit that The Bourne Supremacy is superior in both pacing and quality, however).
Harry Potter is insanely accessible and easy to read, and has a very surprising amount of internal consistency, even over 7 books (which is in stark contrast to most mainstream sci-fi/fantasy series).
As for Twilight, I don't know what makes a book appeal to that demographic, but it seems pretty different than any area I've dabbled in as a reader.
(I worry that giving opinions like these opens me up for some interesting flaming, but whatever.
"Answer: they won't."
Just wanted to say that as I was reading the part about price and space not being important in the decision process, I thought "Yes, but what about time to read as scarce resource?"
And then hit the above quoted section, as if my thoughts were spoken out loud and he was responding to them.
Anticipating your reader's thought process this well is a hallmark of good writing.
ps What's coop?
It's when the publisher buys a prominent display in your store, similar to how stores display groceries.
[I don't do interviews because] I hate taking time away from my writing, and I'm making enough money to stop doing things that I dislike.
are some of the many reasons I love this blog.
I don't know if that is going to be the experience of most authors, though. I think there is a wee bit of App Store Goldrush going on where the ridiculous superiority of the distribution channel makes marketing less necessary than it previously was for people at the head of the distribution. Konrath -- who I literally take physical notes from when it comes to marketing -- may be able to get by with less hustling than he used to, but I think more authors are going to approach the sort of tactics one uses to sell ebooks or software -- list building, online marketing (aside from just "uploading to Amazon", etc).
I think the same is likely true of the App Store too, come to think of it. Angry Birds can be Angry Birds, but everyone else has to work against the platform's strong incentive to marginalize most of the catalog on any given day.
Of course, there's more room for niches (so we might see more domain bestsellers in smaller domains).
Meanwhile, the author of this post, who obviously has a rich marketing background and has used it in this piece, seems to downplay the role of marketing (pretty much all publishers do is marketing) in getting bestsellers going.
As well, any level of anticipation for a title shows that bestsellers are still strong - the post assumes people choose what to buy once they see the shelves, but often they choose before that.
