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What you don't catch, Paul, is that our price is set low -- at 50%, or much less, of the corresponding paperback edition, which is what we can carry without losing money on each sale. Strict Agency 5 fixed-pricing by the bigger publishers sets the bar much higher so that the buyer loses.
The EZread agreement with us puts the buyer on a win-win. Fair pricing that cannot be cut by the retailer without consultation, but also cannot be increased willy-nilly as Amazon is prone to do with Kindle ebook prices.
If one retailer arbitrarily slashes the ebook price on any of our ebook titles, WE (the publisher) would be in breach of our EZread agreement if we didn't immediately inform them and lower across-the-board cover price to an equal level at their store, too.
Cheers. Neil
PS: Here's a wee point for you to ponder: The print per-item cost of a PoD paperback is very much higher than it is for a mass-run product by a major house.
This means that smaller fry like BeWrite Books make a hugely significant saving when print cost is out of the picture and this can be affordably reflected in low ebook prices. The Big Five, however, save much less against print by producing the ebook edition of a title.
So we can offer very low prices on ebooks whereas the bigger players must set the price higher to reflect a smaller saving and (as we also must) to balance the account between ebook and treebook sales to cover other standing costs.
Agency 5, therefore, works for them but not for the consumer. Our much, much lower fixed price, on the other hand, works all round in everyone's favour. N
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