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Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing
AusPublishingWorker writes "With the iPad arriving on the scene, it seems that Amazon is feeling the pressure on eBook pricing from publishers. ITNews reports that Amazon has agreed to deals with both Harper Collins and Simon and Schuster which would allow the companies to select their own prices rather than the default US$9.99 price tag. Given the recent deal with Macmillan, it seems likely that we'll be seeing eBook prices moving up towards $14.99 in the near future."
Therefore I have the right to take it for free.
At your local library -- if you bring it back in 2 weeks. Otherwise,no, it doesn't. You not liking their pricing structure does not give you the right to violate their copyright. (Unless you are Google, that is.)
Exactly. When CD prices went from 10-12 bucks to 18-20 bucks suddenly during the mid 90's I stopped buying CDs and I never have bought one since. I go to 20-30 shows a year though and usually buy tour shirts at the show.
I own a Sony PRS-600, a 1st gen Kindle and an Edge and I have never bought a single e-book because they are worth to me about 3-5 bucks a piece, not 10 bucks. Maybe if you read a book a month that is worth it but I read 2-3 books a week and I'm not about to spend 100+ a month on books when for my entire life buying new and used paper books I have never even come close to that. Can't even sell the damn things. Powell's a book store in PDX where I live I used to be able to recoup 50-60% of the price I paid for the books by trading for store credit, with Amazon, Apple and Sony you get a 10 dollar book sitting in your Library that you will likely never read again.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
If I have to pay that much for an ebook I'll just buy the real thing.
I can resell it when I've read it, I can take it wherever I want and I don't have to worry about someone pressing a button and removing it from my read.
Best of all, I don't have to spring for the price of a reader before I can even start reading a book
The problem with pricing books at $9.99 is the stickiness of the price tag. What is meant by this is consumer' perception of value. Although you can achieve large sales volume at price "below $10", if you ever try to raise the price by even a tiny amount, say $1, consumers *feel* like the markup was much higher than it really is, and sales subsequently drop off heavily.
You sound like a marketing major. They seem to be the only ones who believe that garbage. I don't know anyone who is fooled by pricing at 9.99 and being told "under $10". Just call it $10.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Weren't we promised that competition drives down prices? People are actually enthusiastic about buying an iPad so they can pay MORE for the electronic copy than the paperback editions cost? no thanks.. not unless it comes with ifriends and ilatte
You are correct. He does not have the right. What this kind of rip off gives him however is the motivation. He is not the only one either. There will be many others who feels that these greedy bastards deserve what they get. Too bad about the poor authors caught in the middle.
I know dozens of people who think that way. They're the people on the budgets.
I've seen it consistently at my mother-in-law's consignment shop and she confirms the behavior over the entire lifetime of the business (which has been in business for 14 years). Price it at $X.99 instead of $X+1 and you'll see almost twice as many sales. Similarly--though much more confusingly--people tend to buy stuff marked "Buy One, Get One 50% off," instead of "Buy One, Get One Free!"
I really don't get that one...
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
and I'm not trolling. DRM has changed the way publishing works. Copyright as it is written in the US constitution has been fundamentally broken by new technology. This is why I hate conservatives. I can't get them to understand that a legal document written 200 years ago might, just might, not be 100% relevant any more. Principles are great when everyone subscribes to them, but when they other guy (the publishers) runs roughshod over them it's time to do the same.
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14.99! Yay! I'll buy the PAPERBACK!
There is no reason why an ebook needs to cost more than a paperback, let alone 15 bucks. At least it can't be removed remotely from my reader. I suspect that brick & mortar book stores don't need to worry about their futures the way things are going.
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BMO
Did you forget that the reason Amazon was being pushed into this position was because of the deal the publishers made with Apple for the iPad, and thus MFN status would affect the discounts and other pricing given to Amazon?
These topics are not unrelated.
I can't believe no one even mentioned this: /. all praised the iPad and Apple's scheme to make the publishers more money. Well here are the results of your joyous praise!
Now instead of Amazon keeping e-books at $9.99 and the industry in check--we now have a locked down, DRM-laden, inferior versions to the paperback, for...
$14.99! And that's only the beginning of the price increase!
Thanks Apple fanboys!
They were only trying to protect publishers from themselves. Amazon knows a lot more about what customers will pay for ebooks than publishers do, and their tactics which appeared heavy handed existed because it was the point where the maximum amount of profit could be obtained. Yes the $9.99 price point would hurt the sale of physical books, but you sell so many ebooks at that price that makes up for it tremendously.
The only concern publishers had was that in public you couldn't tell what books other people were reading if they all had Kindles. They felt they lost some free advertising when going to ebooks. What they failed to realize is with an ebook reader attached to a network you can tie it into twitter or facebook which is a far more powerful advertising vehicle than some random stranger in public.
It's really pitiful that publishers are incapable of adapting to the realities of the 21st century. Amazon tried to drag them there kicking and screaming, but have failed.
(ex Amazon employee, so my views may be biased)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Don't take it or nobody will be able to buy it. Leave a copy at least.
I doubt any OCR scanned books you find on torrent sites have proper formatting for your reader.
Weird, I've... *cough*... heard... that the ebooks you download from an average torrent site are OCR'd to plain text, and so are readable on basically anything that will support that format (which is, AFAIK, essentially any reader on the market today).
Granted, you will suffer from more typos and errors, and definitely imperfect page layout. But they work just fine.
How does the existence, or non-existence, of middlemen affect my perceived value?
I see a hardcover at $20 - $30. I get a physical copy that can be used anywhere without special technology. I get the right to resell it when I am done with it. A hard drive crash will not delete it. To me, that has value.
A $14.99 digital copy that has none of these advantages seems to me to have little value. That perception does not depend on middlemen, or the cost of paper. It depends on the usefulness of the product. Whether or not the publisher and author save costs by publishing electronically is not my problem.
Uhh, maybe he 'previews' them via bittorrent/IRC/etc... for free
Requiem for the American Dream