Quote:
Originally Posted by gollu
I don't understand people leaving 1-star rating for a price when they should be rating the content. If the price is too high - there are enough dark ways to obtain the book, and apparently that's the response the book industry will understand. Every person that doesn't buy the book because of its high price is a sale lost, $$ less income.
Then one can come back to Amazon and rate the book with 5 stars, while suggesting book was acquired in an alternative way.
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Why not do both? Just as a form of protest, use the star system as a weapon rather than 'following the rules'.
Stick it to the publisher by making it clear there are alternative sources for the content that is so highly valued, and bias the overall 'quality stats' of the product the publisher is trying to push to pehaps turn future cutomers away.
Just some further ramblings
- not really sure if they make sense as I just typed in my random thoughts on various aspects of this issue - food for thought, at least:
Business understand only one thing - $$$. Forget principles and fair trade practices and consumer rights and anti-trust laws. Money talks and bullsh*t walks! If consumers are unhappy then pressure needs to be brought to bear on the $$$ side of the equation: no sales = no revenue = no profits = no $$$.
In reality consumers have very little power to resist the 'market' but a concerted effort at forcing a change in pricing policy sometimes works. We like to think about capitalism an free markets, but it usually ain't the case.
I would like to see some kind of coordinated effort by Amazon customers to band together and boycott all eBook sales - even for a week or a month - just to send a message. Just to 'run it up the flagpole and see who salutes', so to speak.
And let's face it, rampant piracy would really be a bad thing all around - for publishers, authors and customers. But squeezing blood out of eBook consumers is one sure way to trigger a backlash. I think if book prices are too high more people will take the trouble to find alternative sources for some books - more and more if prices get too pushy.
And a word of warning to publishers and authors - piracy at the moment is haphazard - some people buy books and break the DRM then share them. But if publishers really start pressing the price hikes and force a true eBook black market, it will explode. Every form of DRM has been broken, and new ones fall within days. So a coordinated piracy effort requires only one official eBook sale for mass pirate editions to become available. Duplicate and spread these all over the web and the publishers will see what undercutting really means.
People have pointed out a fallacy in comparing eBook and pBook prices. There is also a fundamental difference in eBook and pBook content when it comes to piracy. Publishers should consider that when defining their Agency models.
The Apple iTunes experience has been mentioned, and regardless of agreeing or diagreeing it seems to have provide one essential lesson. Electronic content is so easy to copy and share that the only way to combat it is to make the original items cheap enough to exclude any significant desire to look elsewhere for sources.
Why try to find a torrent of an mp3 when you can grab it for $0.99 or whatever. Similarly to the iPad - why Jailbreak it (unless you really need some extra features) when apps are so cheap?: $1-$2, $10 for pages, etc. If publishers keep eBook costs attractive very few people will bother with looking elsewhere or pondering their next purchase - they'll just 1-click and buy, buy, buy! (probably spending more overall than when prices were high).