Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonkchapman
The thing I find surprising about that list is that S&S is willing to undercut other e-book dealers with direct sales. If I were an e-bookseller, I would be incredibly ticked that my own supplier was cutting me off at the knees. I suppose it's possible that S&S had a price drop on the Adobe/MSReader/eReader formats and people like Fictionwise just haven't reacted yet, but I don't know. That would certainly make me feel better about S&S.
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Yes, it's called "channel conflict". S&S is making it impossible for any ebook retailer to discount to match S&S's own ebook store prices and still turn a profit. BoB is losing money on every sale at that price after factoring in support costs. If that's a typical BoB discount, then they are making every single S&S title a "loss leader."
Ebook retailers are horrified that S&S does this and privately complain about it all the time. But no single retailer has enough power to force the issue. And if two ebook retailers joined forces to try to force the issue, then they would run afoul of "price fixing" laws in the USA. It is literally illegal in the USA for one ebook retailer to call up another one and even mention the word "price" or discuss discount levels in any way, shape or form. The result is, until there is an ebook retailer large enough that they can independently put the screws to S&S, it isn't going to change.
You might think this is good for S&S, but really it isn't. It means any intelligent ebook retailer will give them little or no front page or newsletter space except perhaps for the super-blockbuster type releases. And because most people who read ebooks don't like buying from 10 different places, that means all their smaller releases (and there are tons of them) get no exposure on all those retail sites. This is really costing S&S a lot of money.