07-27-2014, 04:36 AM | #31 |
Wizard
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There are rich and poor people in Australia, like any other country.
If publishers are setting their prices for ebooks by geographical differences in average income, when the cost of the ebook is not dependent on the geographical location of sale, then I think that is simply unfair. After all, there are differences in average income between different age, gender and racial groups too. Should publishers set their prices based on age, gender or race? If they did then I think they could be prosecuted under human rights legislation. So why is geographical discrimination allowed but age, gender and racial discrimination not? |
07-27-2014, 05:02 AM | #32 | |
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Quote:
Last edited by darryl; 07-27-2014 at 05:05 AM. |
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07-27-2014, 05:14 AM | #33 | |
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http://www.smh.com.au/business/prope...121-2d2t7.html |
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07-27-2014, 07:22 AM | #34 | |
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I do think that with ebooks and JIT book printing, we may see a revival of the small publishers. |
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07-27-2014, 09:09 AM | #35 | |
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"bidding war" book Here are examples that aren't even written by politicians: http://nypost.com/2012/03/28/bidding...hit-1-million/ http://www.news.com.au/national/inte...-1226424860609 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...am-gets-376861 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/bu...lion.html?_r=0 There must be a larger number of cases where there is no bidding war, but the offered advance is higher than it would have been to make one breaking out less likely. Now, if you mean competition between publishers on pricing, that is harder to document. Mike Shatzkin has speculated that PRH is too big to bully and nobody else is. If his speculation is correct, I think you could also say, albeit from quite a different perspective, this: Penguin and Random House used to complete on wholesale pricing terms with their biggest account, but now do not. Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 07-27-2014 at 12:07 PM. |
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07-27-2014, 02:15 PM | #36 | ||
Is that a sandwich?
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And the article doesn't say what Australia's average is as a whole. Quote:
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07-27-2014, 03:57 PM | #37 | |
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And the US has *extremely* affordable housing. Unless you live in California. My city, which is about the size of Perth, although with no ocean view, has a number of 2.4. Here's a link to what they based their numbers on: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf |
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07-27-2014, 05:53 PM | #38 | |
Is that a sandwich?
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As I suspected they only calculated average home price by household income. They didn't include income taxes, property taxes, maintenance and hazard insurance. There are only 14 areas in the US with affordable housing. Nothing is mentioned about housing for those with low wages. Nor Rents! My town is 6.2. |
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07-27-2014, 10:31 PM | #39 |
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Isn't most of Australia "the outback" and people mostly live along the coast? That certainly affects housing affordability.
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07-27-2014, 10:42 PM | #40 |
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Yes - if you live in Perth and you're pulling a six-figure mining salary, you're just fine. Too bad if you're not in a position to get one of those jobs, though.
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07-28-2014, 01:04 AM | #41 | |
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07-28-2014, 02:00 AM | #42 | |
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The 14 "affordable markets" are only for metro areas greater than 1 million. But if you look at the table on page 4 - there are 84 "affordable" markets [3.0 and less] in the US (out of 236 total); 100 moderately unaffordable [3.1-4.0]; 29 seriously unaffordable [4.1-5.0]; and 23 severely unaffordable [5.1 +]. Out of 39 markets, Australia has 0 "affordable", 0 "moderately affordable", 14 "seriously unaffordable"; and 25 "severely unaffordable". Yeah, it's not a perfect measure by any means, but comparing the median house to the median income is a reasonable way to get a rough overview of a housing market. |
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07-28-2014, 03:44 AM | #43 |
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Moderator Notice
Please take discussions of house prices to either the Lounge or the P&R forum. The topic of this thread is "Agency Pricing Seems to be alive and well in Australia". Any further off-topic posts will be deleted. Thank you. |
07-28-2014, 04:26 AM | #44 |
Treachery of images ...
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Golly Harry, it seems to me that the discussion as a whole has been on topic, and that the issue of house prices was and is only one of the indices used by some members when discussing whether the price of a book is relative to the state of the economy and the general personal affordability ratio of the given country.
Whilst I may not contribute to economic arguments I still value the contribution of those who do. The cost of buying a book, the cost of selling a book and the pricing formulas and the relative contingencies seems to be a fairly broad brush in my opinion. |
07-28-2014, 11:53 AM | #45 |
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I have no problem with Agency pricing.
Agency pricing has led to a greater variety of places to buy e-books, imho. Now, it does suppress competition on price, but at least it's allowed places like Kobo to exist. While I'm aware that Amazon never treated all e-books as loss leaders, it's a well known fact that their profit margins are razor thin and that very few companies can survive at that level. I don't want to live in a world where Amazon is the only place I can get e-books from major publishers. (Don't get me wrong, I'm sure places like Baen & Smashwords would survive, but I read more then the authors they sell.) I'm already annoyed with Amazon as they have sole e-book rights to Ian Fleming's catalogue. Kobo has their faults, but they're more open in the e-book realm then Amazon, and they don't treat Canada as a secondary market. Arrgh. Kinda rambling there. Anyways, I don't regard Agency as intrinsically evil, as long as the publishers treat the price points in a fair fashion. Most of the publishers I consume from set their e-book prices at slightly lower then the p-books, which makes sense to me. As I would've happily paid the p-book price back before I switched, I have no issues with paying a little less and getting a format I enjoy more. |
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