Apple Raises E-book Prices For Everyone

Nom du Keyboard writes "I was informed by my publisher this week that they would have to raise my e-book prices because they planned to sell them through the Apple iBooks store. How could this happen? A lot of my individual stories sell in the $1 to $3 range, which is well within the impulse purchase amount for many people. In this price range a 50-cent price difference may well be the difference between a purchase and a pass. Meanwhile, Apple is touting its new 'agency model,' whereby the publishers set the prices. However, it seems that Apple requires books sold in its iBook store have prices ending in .99 — nothing else." (More below.) "Furthermore, Apple requires that if you sell books through them that you absolutely cannot sell them for less through anyone else. To my understanding Amazon also requires this, so Apple and Amazon prices should be identical in the future, but Amazon doesn't force prices to end in .99. What this means is that an e-book that the author was quite happy to sell for $2.29 or $2.49 is now going to cost $2.99 from everybody. While that sounds like only a few extra cents, it adds up over time and can lead to resentment against authors for charging higher prices, even though they have little real control over pricing. I, for one, do not understand why Apple computers only understand numbers ending in .99, or just how Apple is making it better for the consumer this way."

Comments

Re: Price elasticity of demand

[Miseph]

Except that you fail reading comprehension, so to help you and a few of the other people who couldn't quite grasp the problem on round one, I'll yell it for you:

NEITHER APPLE NOR AMAZON WILL ALLOW YOU TO SELL YOUR E-BOOK AT A LOWER PRICE THROUGH ANOTHER VENDOR

You can't price the Apple version lower because Amazon won't let you, and you can't set the Apple price to anything that doesn't end with .99. Now I will yell out the summary vís-a-vís your proposed solution:

NEITHER PRICE IS ALLOWED TO BE LOWER THAN THE OTHER, SO YOUR POINT IS COMPLETELY INVALID