Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
Really?
I don't think think Waterstones are happy. I think they are seeing Amazon simply taking the market away from them by charging prices people are willing to pay. They either match that or become irrelevant. It is Waterstone's problem, not mine, I'm buying from Amazon.
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I'm quite sure Waterstones
aren't happy.
Retailing is a brutally competitive business, and one principal area is competition on price. Part of "What the market will bear" in terms of pricing will be determined by the actions of retailers.
Waterstones is in a position to people like Barnes and Noble or Borders in the US. They are a "brick and mortar" chain, whose principal trade is in paper books. One of the challenges for such chains is the competition posed by online retailers like Amazon who don't have a chain of retail outlets, with the associated overhead. Another is how to sell ebooks, and create a continuing engagement with the customer. They'll be happy to sell ebooks, but they also want reasons for the customers to visit the stores.
You buy where you can get things cheapest, and so do most other folks.
The issue this thread deals with is how much customers are willing to pay for an ebook, and that's not entirely under the retailer's control. As the Agency Pricing move demonstrates, the publisher can set a minimum price the retailer has to charge. This is not unique to publishing or ebooks. You'll see instances of it all over, and moves by vendors to enforce price discipline. This isn't simply producer greed - if your products are sold primarily through retail, and you have an established authorized dealer network, you want to support and preserve that network, and this will include moves designed to lessen retailers using cutthroat pricing to drive other dealers out of business. As a producer selling through retailers, that sort of strife in the dealer channel is not in your best interest, and retailers who behave that way may find themselves dropped from your authorized dealer network and not allowed to resell your products.
As the report quoted upthread points out, customers
were willing to pay higher prices for popular ebooks. They paid them for the same reason they buy a hardcover instead of waiting a year for the PB release - they want the book
now, and will pay a premium to get it.
Another poster mentioned his experience with Hachette, who were deliberately pricing ebooks a couple of bucks
higher than the corresponding paperback release. Hachette is betting that people want ebooks enough that price will
not be the determining factor, and that they'll pay a premium to get the electronic edition instead of the cheaper paperback. There are certainly enough folks on MobileRead doing their best to go all ebook, who don't
want a paper volume, to make it an interesting question. If you want the book, and only want an electronic edition, will you pay a premium to get it, will you break down and buy the paper book to get the lower price, or will you simply forgo the book?
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Dennis