Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Deteriorated? It got better. It makes a point that a lot of people here at MR needs to understand so we can get rid of all the threads complaining in an uninformed way about the price.
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Agreed. There are so many
valid reasons to complain about the Agency price-fixing that it physically hurts me (I bleed inside
) when people choose the wrong reasons to complain.
For instance (and the following directed at OP now) -
Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
How did this "business as usual" become "the publishers are waging war on us"? Amazon. Amazon decided to buy market dominance by subsidizing the price of new release popular books. Now the paperback crowd (folks like me) could live the good life of a new release book buyer on a paper back budget. Happiness all around.
Well, happiness except for the publishers who were witnessing the value of their business being undermined. (emph. mine) So they stood up and STOPPED Amazon and put the "new release price" back into place -- a place that was lower than hard backs but higher than paper backs.
Oh the travesty! Oh the wailing! The publishers are doing us WRONG! We DEMAND our paper back price for new release books!
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No one is telling
publishers to keep the price low. They should (and always have) charge whatever price they want to the retailer (Amazon) or at their own ebookstore (if they have one). After that, get the fark out of the way. So, OP appears to be misinformed about who is complaining to whom about what. As I said before, we're merely hoping that the publishing industry wakes up one day and behaves like a capitalist industry
- not OPEC. The only reason their business is being undermined is because Amazon finally demonstrated how arbitrary the HC prices (and more so the ebook prices) really are. There's nothing wrong with that of course, books are in general a luxury item. Just don't start whining when someone else undercuts you and makes a killing. Also, the market will react in predictable ways to attempts to re-inflate prices artificially - the publishing industry was royally screwed the moment Amazon decided to lower prices. When new price points are established for new release ebooks, even die-hard hardcover buyers will start petering off (now that even exclusivity is denied them).
At this point, a publisher trying to sell a new release at upwards of $25 succeeds only because of the
Pabst blue ribbon effect, so I'm kinda glad I'm in the "doesn't matter category".
This is not a fair fight - no Queensberry rules
. Price-fixing is fighting dirty - so yes, consumers respond in kind with boycotts and negative reviews (not so misguided when I thought about it some more - makes influential authors lean on the publishers when they see ratings drop) and Amazon responds by stating facts ("this price was set by the publisher" and leaving the negative reviews in place).