[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Nathanael

Not really. You just pointed to one expensive ebook. FWIW, I've done some quick math (which may or may not be accurate; I invite correction). Average prices for Amazon's top 20 NYT Bestseller titles for the week of Aug. 1 in each of the following categories:

Hardcover Fiction: $14.91.
Hardcover Nonfiction: $14.96.
Trade PB Fiction: $9.14.
Massmarket PB Fiction: $8.60.
Massmarket PB Nonfiction: $9.59.

Amazon's top 100 ebook bestsellers (minus the two newspaper subscriptions), average price: $8.75.

Smashword's top 100 titles, average price: $0.71.

I'm not seeing where ebooks are more expensive than pbooks, even at Amazon.

If you could be so kind, please provide a link to Amazon's bestseller lists sorted by format, because I'm having a devil of a time trying to get the thing to admit MM paperbacks exist at all.

And what does Smashwords have to do with it? We're talking about prices on the same item here, not unrelated items. That's like saying that beef is cheaper than potatoes because a McDonald's burger costs less than a La Snootiere baked potato.

"Those" books being Bix Six titles, presumably. Strikes me as a bit like complaining that the only place you can buy Sears tires is at Sears. If you don't like that Sears has a monopoly on Sears tires, then go buy Goodyear instead.

Sears tires are, by and large, the same as Goodyear tires. They both do the same job, they're comparable across equal specs, and there's no effective difference when you've got them on your car (and the odds are they're made in the same factory by the same workers). Joe Schmoe's magnum opus of unedited, unproofread, grammatically illiterate text is, however, not the same as Lord of the Rings, except perhaps by word count. If you're buying words as commodities, I can set you up with a nice random number generator to produce as many as you like. However, if you're buying books, you're buying specific books, not just some random mass of words, and it would be better for the readers (that would be us) if the sellers of those books were permitted to compete in a free market. Why do you hate capitalism?

Bingo! I guarantee you'll be much happier.

What has given you the idea that I am unhappy? Does a discussion of economics and the publishing market become a deep emotional issue for you? To me, it's just a discussion of economics and the publishing market.

What price fixing, and how (be specific) is it hurting the ebook market?

As you well know, I'm speaking of the Agency 5 cartel.

As for how it hurts the market ... sorry, this might be a bit awkwardly explained, as I'm used to discussing economic issues with fellow capitalists and advocates of the free market, and one of the base premises is that competition is a good thing, and the driving force in setting an economically appropriate price. I don't deal with socialists or monopolists much, so I'm likely to leave out some important basics. Anyway, when you have a free market, the whole supply and demand thing is active, and competition drives price and quality. This rewards the most efficient producers and the ones most responsive to the consumers' needs, and eliminates the inefficient and, basically, the deadwood. This results in (theoretically, at least!) the best products at the best prices.

Consider the former telco monopoly in the US. Anyone who thinks the service and pricing situation is bad today doesn't remember the days when your only option in telephones was desk or wall and black or tan (and you rented, not owned, them), when a 3-minute call to a town 10 miles away was about $5 in today's dollars, and when long-distance calls were for birthdays, Mother's Day, and emergencies. Now, thanks to the breakup of the monopoly, you can buy your phone service from multiple providers, you can go into a store and choose from numerous phones with features that no Western Electric phone ever dreamed of, you can talk anywhere in the US for an hour or more at a price that used to buy you three minutes within 20 miles ... and it's because of competition. You have suppliers of all of the elements of the system, from telephones to fiber and satellite links, and you have retailers who sell those at whatever price they feel they can make a profit at (or as a loss leader to make a profit in some other area), and they're all competing for customers, and now competing with cellular, VoIP, etc. Someone from 50 years ago would be flabbergasted.

The price-fixing cartel has prohibited competition. If you want to buy an ebook they manufacture, you have to buy it at their set price no matter who you buy it from. Pbooks don't work that way. While B&N might have a sale on trade paperbacks this week, or Borders might have one of those 40% off coupons, or Fred's Bookshop might have a permanent 10% off all mystery novels, they can't do that with ebooks. There's no competition allowed. Therefore, the free market can't affect the prices, because there is no free market. Books are not fungible.

Define "affordable". The same folk who think nothing about plopping down $20 for a hardcover suddenly think $9 for an ebook is price gouging. How's that work?

Dunno, you'll have to ask someone who thinks that. As I haven't seen any posting here, you might have to do some looking.

I think twice (if not more) about plopping down $8 for a mass market paperback; therefore, I think $10 or $15 for a book that has less utility, which I cannot resell when I'm done, donate to the charity rummage sale, or even pass on to my mother-in-law, is excessive. I don't like paying more and getting less. (so I don't)

Then get over your addiction to cartel books. Don't buy 'em. There's plenty of other stuff out there as good as or better. And most of that is free.

Please read my post again and point out to me where I said I had an "addiction" to cartel books? All I can find, in any of my posts on the subject, is where I've said that I buy from Baen, from Smashwords, from other independents, from authors directly, and of course gather classics from the PD sites.

I suppose back in the days of the Bell System monopoly, you'd have said "get over your addiction to the telepone; write a letter." Thankfully, that way of looking at things didn't prevail. I don't miss those days in the slightest. (though I do have a bluetooth-enabled replica 302 handset, and matching ringtone, for my mobile)