Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
You also have situations with "predatory pricing," where a company will intentionally lower prices in order to eliminate the competition -- which is pretty much what Amazon was doing prior to the agency model. However, it is worth noting that this is a very expensive strategy, and as such rarely works.
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It's refreshing to you continue to stand up for sound economics. Too few on these forums have any understanding of how things really work.
Pricing is RARELY if ever about the cost of production. At most, and not always at that, production costs set a price floor.
The cost to produce a hard back book NEVER justified being 4 times the cost of a paper back book. It was then, as it is now -- DEMANAD pricing. A new book is in higher demand than a book that's been out for a year.
What is the cost difference between a new release movie you pay $11 bucks for -- or the SAME movie that your pay $3 to see at the cheap theaters 8 months later? Nothing. What do you have to explain the difference in price? Demand.
Clearly -- $12.99 to $14.99 has done very little to impact demand for books -- despite those who come on these forums and swear vengeance the publishers. It will never matter if 1,000 harpies on this forum declare they'll never pay more than 50 cents for an ebook when millions of folks are paying $12.99 for new release hit ebooks.
Tom Clancy is coming out with a new book for the first time in 10 years. I'm getting mine the first day, and I'm paying $14.99, and I'm just thrilled that I'm not paying $24 for the hard back -- not to mention not having to lug a hard back around.
So the harpies can rant and rail all they want. It's much noise signifying nothing whatsoever.
Lee