Slashdot Mirror
The Price of Amazon
An anonymous reader writes "As physical book stores continue to struggle and disappear, the NY Times puts the changing book industry into perspective as a cost of the existence of Amazon. Further, it's a cost that hasn't been fully paid, as other effects of Amazon's ascendancy have yet to be felt. Quoting: 'One consequence of this shift is that soon no one will know what a book's "real" price is. Price will be determined by demand and perhaps by whim. The first seeds of this can be seen in the Justice Department's suit against the leading publishers, who felt that Amazon was pricing their e-books so low that it threatened their viability. The government accused the publishers of colluding to raise prices in an anti-consumer move. Amazon was not a party to the case, but it emerged the big winner.' Economists, publishers, and readers no longer have confidence that a book will cost the same amount this week as it did the last."
If you want old books, Project Gutenberg might be worth your time.
As I said to the other guy ... you haven't worked very many menial jobs in your life have you?
It was an up sell item on computer systems.
This is the real reason for the ridiculous pricing of cables. Stores don't sell a lot of cables and customers who are only buying a cable are rare, so competing on cable pricing doesn't make any sense.
They jack up the prices on cables because they know that they can often sell them to customers who are buying computers, televisions or other expensive products that the store does have to compete on pricing with. The profit margin on the expensive item will be fairly low, so they want a variety of high profit margin add-ons like cables and extended warranties that they can push the customer to buy.