How Valuable are classics to publishers?

[casnow]

With the advent of Google Books and the free versions of many of the public domain classics it is very conceivable that printing these will soon be a very uneconomic prospect. Anyone know how much revenue/profit that publishers make from these?

With Amazon, B&N, Google, and others giving away these books electronically will people keep buying them? (i'm pictuing all the poor college kids that want to save $10 by not buying it for their literature classes when they can download for free).

[JFBookman]

It's very hard to quantify this if you aren't privvy to a publisher's financials. However, what is often overlooked, and could be directly influenced by the Google activity, is that publishing is largely a backlist business. The frontlist books attract the most attention and, if one takes off, can contribute mightily to the publisher's bottom line.

But year after year, the backlist is what supports the publishing house and makes all those frontlist books possible. Booksellers know this, and book reps know it also. The "evergreen" titles on any publisher's list are what keep them in business. This is also one of the reasons it's really hard to start a publishing business from scratch, since you have no backlist.

So yes, in my opinion, "classics" or older books that sell year after year are the lifeblood of publishing.

[casnow]

From looking closely at Googlebooks, kindle store, sony estore, B&N online store, etc., you can download almost anything written before 1932 for free. So this includes things like: Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Jules Verne, Jack London, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Proust, etc.

I know these aren't a big portion of any companies' sales, but it is always a couple of racks worth in any brick and mortar type bookstore - since the only cost with these books is the actual printing/shipping (no royalties b/c they are public domain) that the profit margin is very, very high.

I'm conflicted on whether this is a good thing or not - in one way I think it's great because it is allowing access to timeless classics in a format that is very user friendly (especially now that I have my ereader) and could help to expose the masses to some great literature. However, it is also hitting publishers in an area where they could count on solid returns in the past... that will mean less money for new novels and authors.

On another note, I would encourage people to check out Google books for doing historic research - they have a huge wealth of information scanned and archived (I spent a couple of hours reading an old geologic survey report of my hometown from the mid 1800's. Found out that their even used to be a university - long since dead - in my little home town as well)

[JFBookman]

Yes, I believe right now the date is 1923 (or thereabouts) because anything published before that date is in the public domain and can be reprinted by anyone who cares to do so. This has also led to multiple editions, from different publishers, of many of the same books. For instance, there are many editions of some of Shakespeare's works, and I got a free copy of his Complete Works I downloaded on my iPhone. That doesn't mean that people won't keep buying Shakespeare--they will. But the availability of lesser-known works that aren't profitable to print is a real advantage for researchers, for sure.