You're all missing a very important point that was made in the article:
Quote:
Marilyn Ducksworth, a spokeswoman for Penguin, said only that sales had been strong since the Sept. 28 publication date.
“It’s a long and wonderful book, of which we have sold over 20,000 e-books in the last seven days,” Ms. Ducksworth said.
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Quote:
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many readers seemed willing to pay nearly $20 for an e-book. On Monday evening, “Fall of Giants” remained at No. 7 on the Kindle best-seller list, which is updated hourly.
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The fact is that people are clearly willing to pay these prices for a hot new book. Why should publishers be worried about someone posting on a forum saying he'd have bought it at $10 when there are 20,000 people willing to buy it at $20? Publishers will still get the bulk of the other sales later when it's discounted.
Yes, $20 is high for an ebook, and yes, the industry (both publishing and retail) needs to get its ducks lined up better. If they want to use agency pricing, they need to build in the discounts that are typically given to retailers - "Fall of Giants" actually lists at $36, the HB is only cheaper because Amazon is able to discount it so much.
The whole point of the reverse auction model of book pricing is that you milk the top end of the market first. As long as both physical and digital editions of the book get discounted in parallel over the next year I'm not really that concerned.