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."
Just Amazon? Just books?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
This just in: the market isn't the same as it was 50 years ago! Some scientists are saying we need to observe our market differently. Panic ensues.
... Selection.
Amazon beats any bookstore at finding older books.
Brick and mortar stores are all about displaying 20 copies of the latest shit best-seller, sitting side by side, on the front shelves. No thanks.
... for the buggywhip makers.
What use is a physical book store when I do not want to buy physical books?
And it's not just physical books and bookstores. I have no local computer shop that carries even 0.01% of the inventory that Amazon and Newegg possess, and the stuff they do have is just purchased from Amazon or Newegg and marked up 30%.
Amazon is just better than shopping locally. Better in terms of selection, price, and availability. Best of all I don't even have to leave my house. Books are delivered instantly to my Kindle and there's a 2 to 5 days wait for physical-goods.
Economists, publishers, and readers no longer have confidence that a book will cost the same amount this week as it did the last.
Breaking news: prices of goods change based on supply and demand. Film at 11.
'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.
How is that a consequence? Haven't books always been priced based on demand and whim? They don't think the price of a $200 textbook is primarily in the print materials, do they?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
A Financial Times photographer visits an Amazon fulfillment center in England. This is what your one-click purchases are doing to people.
The "BuggyWhip" makers morphed into GM.
I thought the whole point was that when books are in demand, prices increase, and as things fall out of favour, price decreases? Why should a book that few people want cost as much next week as it did this week? Compete, make a book people want to read, people will pay for it.
Oscar Wilde might have once said "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
Price is supposed to be set by demand. And if it is set wrong on a whim, people don't buy it.
If by "fairly" you mean that bloated, overpriced, arrogant publishing houses with excessive internal costs can't force their customers to pay inflated prices anymore, then yes, they can't price "fairly" anymore.
As far as I'm concerned, the revolution in the book market isn't done until every single big 20th century publisher is out of businesses, and most authors sell and market their books themselves through convenient and inexpensive online services.
Let me get this straight. Based on the "struggle" and "disappear" links in the summary, I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for Barnes & Noble as well as Borders. Is that correct?
It wasn't all that long ago people lamented how these mega-stores - specifically Barnes & Noble and Borders - were killing all the little independent book shops. Their response was they delivered what the consumer wanted at lower prices. Well, it looks like the shoe is on the other foot now! I actually felt bad about the independent book sellers (a few of whom have managed to adapt and do good business)... but not these guys. If they can't compete in the modern marketplace, that's their problem.
#DeleteChrome
Y'know, when Baen Books started selling e-books through Amazon, they had to -raise- the $6.99 prices of books sold through their own store - because Amazon would price-match their store, otherwise.
As a result of this, Baen increased author royalties on e-books by 25%, so more of the customer's money is going to the author.
So I'm guessing Amazon's $9.99 default price isn't hurting fiction authors much unless their publisher's an asshole.
(Though really, buying them through Amazon instead of direct from Baen is silly - Baen gives you your books in Kindle's .mobi, Nook/everyone else's epub, EBookwise, Microsoft .LIT, Sony Digital Reader, HTML, and as a .rtf file.)
You're right that the publisher and author should set the price of the ebook - they should set the WHOLESALE price, that Amazon - or whoever else - pays them for the book.
If Amazon wants to sell books below cost as a loss leader for Kindle sales, that's up to Amazon. The publisher should take their stated wholesale price and be happy with it.
That's actually how it USED to work before the 'agency pricing model' came in.
You know what else happened when the 'agency pricing model' came in?
Most of the indie e-bookstores closed.
Great job letting the publishers set prices, there. With publisher-set pricing, there was nothing else for the smaller stores left to compete with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple over.
The one I used had a 'book club' program, that offered discounts with multiple purchases. Suddenly, they couldn't do that any more.
And they only avoided going under entirely by getting bought out by B&N.
So, in short: Fuck the 'agency pricing' model. And fuck the publishers using it.
Set a wholesale price for the thing, sell it wholesale, put a 'suggested retail' price on it, and let the retail channel decide what to actually sell it for.
You know, like almost every other product on the market.
I think the point of the article is about: Do people want the changes that are happening to the main street to continue?
From a purely consumer standpoint, sure, cheaper is better. And as long as there's no development of monopolies or other devious practices, that's fine for consumers.
But. Stores closing down in your town leads to decrepit town centres; decaying cities aren't nice and have other, unpleasant consequences. Massive corporate tax avoidance (partly why Amazon has such great prices in the UK?) actually is a bad thing too -- for infrastructure, and for your own personal tax bill. So yes, these changes have a cost -- to society. But, damn, that USB memory/ LED monitor/ Android tablet is cheaper there. Yay!
I honestly don't see the link with your message and what you replied to.
The price of goods is decided what the market of buyers at large is willing to pay, not what every single buyer is willing to pay.
The supply of good writers is only a factor if you assume that the supply of ebooks is limited by the production of new books.
We've reached a point where the current supply of existing content exceeds the average person's lifespan by several orders of magnitude.
If authors were to stop writing books tomorrow, there would be no shortage of books available to read. The world might be at a loss, but the supply would still be far greater than the ability of readers to consume.
you cannot lend to as many people as you'd like
How often do you actually do that?
you cannot keep a personal backup copy
But someone else does that for you. And with Calibre, you can do it yourself.
you cannot resell it
But you usually get it for less than the cost of the physical book, so you already took the price break of selling it later, up front.
you cannot read it on anything other than a Kindle.
Except a phone or a tablet or a computer.
And here are some things you can do with a Kindle eBook that you can't do with a physical book:
Own 4700 of them without taking up any shelf space or having to move heavy boxes.
Take 4700 of them with you on vacation.
Carry 4700 of them with you in your backpack.
Have one delivered to you a minute after deciding you want it.
Gain immediate access to a book you forgot to bring with you. Even if you didn't bring your Kindle.
Have it delivered without a gas-guzzling truck pulling up to your door and a package to dispose of.
Do a word search.
Make highlights and have electronic access to the parts you've highlighted.
I, too, would like them to be cheaper, but they aren't directly comparable to physical books. Things change. Progress is made.
There is no "real" price. Prices are determined by what sellers can get for a product, and what people will pay.
This isn't even about "real" prices. The big publishing houses have for years inflated prices because they could. Now an upstart comes along and starts to eat into their profits, and the old school publishers aren't happy about it. Of course not!
The book publishing industry is now following the same path that the music industry started following when iTunes disrupted their little racket back in 2001. The book industry has been ripe for change for years. It's nice to see it finally happening. Now if we could just see the same thing start happening to textbooks!