Electronic books: To "E" or not to "E"? A strategic analysis of distribution channel choices of publishers

Guowei Hua, T.C.E. Cheng and Shouyang Wang

International Journal of Production Economics, 2011, vol. 129, issue 2, 338-346

Abstract: The advent of electronic books (e-books) has significantly impacted the publishing industry in recent years. The prevalence of e-books has prompted many publishers to reconsider their distribution channels for new titles. They need to decide whether to sell the e-book version of new titles. We derive the conditions under which a publisher should sell only printed books (p-books), only e-books, and both of them simultaneously. We analyze the impact of reader acceptance of e-book and the wholesale price of the counterpart p-book on the distribution channel choice of the publisher under stochastic demand. We find that only if wholesale price of p-book is high and reader acceptance of e-book is low should the publisher sell only p-books; otherwise, he should sell e-books, even when reader acceptance of e-book is low, i.e., in most cases the publisher should sell e-books (perhaps selling p-books simultaneously). In general, the higher the reader acceptance of e-book is, the more the publisher tends to sell the e-book to readers directly. However, our analysis also shows that even when reader acceptance of e-book is very high, the publisher does not necessarily sell only e-books. The wholesale price reflects the publisher's power of negotiation over bookstores. The higher the publisher's power of negotiation over bookstores is, the more he is inclined to sell p-books; and when reader acceptance of e-book is relatively high, the lower the publisher's power of negotiation is, the more he tends to sell only e-books.

Keywords: Supply; chain; management; Distribution; channel; Information; goods; Newsvendor; model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925-5273(10)00440-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:proeco:v:129:y:2011:i:2:p:338-346

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Production Economics is currently edited by Stefan Minner

More articles in International Journal of Production Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().