Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
This is a good place to start. Sounds perfectly reasonable that as long as you get to determine the money that comes to you -- you're perfectly fine with a retailer putting your books on sale -- maybe even choosing to use your book as a loss leader by loosing money on selling your book in order for the retailer to gain in some other way.
Ok. So we have a principle here -- you do care about what the retailer does IF it impacts your own income.
Well, now lets extend your interest to not only your books, but all the books that a large publisher is concerned about. If you have a retailer with huge marketshare -- setting a price point so low that you KNOW if such pricing is allowed to stand -- then your business will be hurt financially even while the retailer pays your wholesale price.
BING0 -- now you know why the "Agency 5" stood up for themselves against Amazon. It is the SAME self preservation that an individual author wishes to exercise.
Lee
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Except that from what we could glean, Amazon was taking the hit financially, not the author or the publisher. That's the part I don't get. In the 35 percent model (under $1.99) if Amazon puts a book on sale, they take the hit--even if they put the book for free. So it doesn't particularly bother me. But in the 70 percent model (2.99 and up to 9.99) I take the hit. I can managed that by pricing higher or pricing differently, so it's still a workable model--it's just more of a pain in the rear and requires more attention. A publisher with many books isn't going to want to manage that and either has to price high going in or keep an eye on "sales."
It's possible that publishers worked under two or more pricing structures with Amazon, but I find it a little suspect that they would have been allowing Amazon or any other retailer to discount and push the financial liability back to the publisher. And if they were doing so, it would seem reasonable to assume that in those cases, Amazon was getting the small percentage just as we are with the under $2.99. But no one is going to tell us for sure one way or the other.