Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
You're all missing a very important point that was made in the article:
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 $36, the HB is only cheaper because Amazon is able to discount it so much.
The whole point of the reverse auction model of book pricing is that you milk the top end of the market first. As long as both physical and digital editions of the book get discounted in parallel over the next year I'm not really that concerned.
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Most consumers don't accept that the publishers have the right to milk new releases for as much as they can get. It's viewed as an insult. A successful transaction is when both sides are satisfied, it's not when one side gets the absolute most they can and the other side leaves angry.
Two random anecdotes from my workplace. These are people that I hadn't spoken to about ebooks before.
1) At lunch time I heard over the partition "Are they f$@&ing nuts, look at this. Unbelievable they want $24 for a friggin electronic book when I can buy the paper book for $18. Screw them".
2) Another co-worker saw that I had an electronic book reader and told me that he'd bought an iPad. "I tried downloading an electronic book but A) The selection wasn't very good B) The prices were really high C) The quality was horrible. I'll take a pass."