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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
For instance, we order occasional books from Amazon UK - hardcover editions of British publications of Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, and Tom Holt (who doesn't seem to have a US publisher these days.) We can place the order with Amazon UK and have them ship to us. We cannot order them from Amazon US. They don't have the rights to sell the British editions.
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But since you *can* buy the books, they aren't georestricted to you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
It's a symptom of much larger problem, which is that the Internet is making things like national boundaries increasingly irrelevant in many cases.
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But for the georestriction problem it means: look, but don't touch, or to be more precise: we sell the ebook, but not to you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Nope. I never said costs are double counted. There are costs common to all three editions, incurred in acquiring and preparing the book for publication in the first place, which will be allocated across all three editions.
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Can you please read what you quote? I didn't say that
you said that costs are double counted, but that "the publishers effectively count everything twice".
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
If I find one, I will. How do you think they get applied?
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I don't think that they get applied at all since the price is set based on guess work. And my point is that you won't find an article on that since publishers like to pretend that hardcovers are the only ones out there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Meanwhile, you seem to be saying you simply don't believe me, because my posts don't agree with what you want to be true.
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You're imagining things
I like to argue in general, and it is very easy to argue with vague statements (I am a physicist, so for me anything that doesn't involve exact values and doesn't go by formulas is vague).
If I would truly take a guess at how the pricing is done I would say that some of the costs like marketing and the cover art for example are only attributed to the HC and the price is set accordingly. So the price that we get for a PB is lower because some of the costs have been covered already. If I'm right, the reason why the publishers can't say this out-loud is because they would be saying that whoever buys a HC is covering some of the costs for those who buy PB, essentially paying more because some people are cheap.
Then the reason that the price of the ebooks can't be lower is because while in themselves they represent a lower risk (no returns), they increase the uncertainty for the paper version. While if you see a popular HC you will want to buy it before the store runs out, the ebook can be there forever, which means that there is no worry, and who knows, maybe tomorrow it will be cheaper, or if you don't find the HC anymore, you can just get the ebook.
Since they are accustomed to working only with paper, such an event wouldn't fit their predictions, especially since the number of people with ereaders is continually increasing and will spread differently among readers with different book preferences. As many who buy their first reader will buy more books in the beginning, it is even more difficult to interpret the trend. A higher price for ebooks limits these erratic behaviors in buyer mentality and also means that some of the extra profit of ebooks will cover some of the extra losses of HC.
The situation is different in the case of a new self published author who gives only the ebook version as some of the costs are just not there (the author does the editing and proofreading and cover art). Also, the perspective is different: since the author is also the publisher, the royalties also go to paying for the things that are outsourced, making the profits smaller than they seem. To an individual, doing something in the evening means no cost; to a company it means overtime.
But this is all guess work on my part.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
You're quite right. They do imply costs. The question is how great the costs are, and whether removing them will materially affect the price charged to you.
My feeling is that they are a relatively small component of the total cost, and dropping them won't reduce the publisher's costs enough to allow a reduction in the book's price.
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Removing costs would always mean that the price can be lower, but I agree that there is the matter of how much. I didn't assume that the .99 prices were a matter of great coincidence
