Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft
Yes, but the problem is that the publishers are not good a retail - even if by "good" you mean maximizing overall profit for the publisher. Publishers obviously are about maximizing profit, but they have a short term view and want to maximize profit over all media (I think they are failing at this goal, but we will never know unless one or more Agency publisher get so bad at this that they go bankrupt). Amazon has a long term view and wants to promote ebooks.
I don't boycott Agency publishers, but I don't buy when they play their stupid games of pricing ebooks more than an available paperback, or pricing ebook bundles at exactly the same total price as the individual ebooks it contains, or pricing a brand new author's first ebook at $14.99.
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I would actually argue that the publishers are taking a longer view than Amazon. I don't think they're always making the right decisions, but I don't think they're as short-sighted as some think.
The problem is that their margins are very tight and they can't afford to experiment with things that might cut into hardcover bestseller sales - as they're the engine that keeps everything running.
The eBook of a paperback should not cost any more than that paperback - and really should be cheaper. However, the eBook of a brand-new hardcover, while indistinguishable from the eBook of a paperback, needs to be priced higher than the eventual paperback edition because otherwise it will cannibalize the sales of the hardcover to an extent that may be unsustainable.
They can't cut their own throats to support eBooks - so they're being very cautious.