To ensure the increasing popularity of e-books do not undermine the success of their printed counterparts, publishers frequently delay the digital publication date for several weeks after the print edition has been released. Georgia Tech Professor Dr. Yu “Jeffrey” Hu, and Co-Authors Dr. Hailiang Chen, City University of Hong Kong, and Dr. Michael Smith, Carnegie Mellon University, studied the effects of delayed publication and found that holding up the digital release of a new book can actually decrease total sales – not just sales of the e-version.
Their paper earned a rare shout out from INFORMS who published the study in their flagship journal, Management Science, and put out an informative press release.