Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
So, what does it mean when the people are voting for agency priced ebooks?
After all, agency pricing for 5 out of the 6 largest publishers went into effect over a year ago, and it doesn't seem to have appreciably slowed the adoption of ebooks. It's entirely possible that by the end of this year, the people who got into ebooks before agency pricing went into effect will be outnumbered by those who got in after -- and have not seen much retailer-controlled pricing.
My suspicion, albeit as yet unproven, is that most people merely do not care who is setting the price. All that matters is whether that price is acceptable.
And I, for one, don't have a problem with it. Of particular note is that it is not anti-competitive. Retailers are now all playing on an even playing field, and still have numerous other factors to differentiate their services -- ranging from devices and apps, to customer service, to self-publishing options. Smaller publishers aren't forced to use agency pricing, and can undoubtedly undercut the Big 6 on price if they choose.
And, of course, no one complains when Joe Author wrestles back control of electronic rights from his publisher, signs up for Smashwords and Createspace and.... tells the retailer what price to sell the book at. I swear, someone ought to string up those agency pricing independent authors, they are killing the market for ebooks.  |
I believe it is anti-competitive and anti-free-market. I feel the same way about MAP policies from Apple and others. I believe for a free market, the retailer should be able to purchase a product from their supplier at whatever cost they negotiate, and should be able to sell it at whatever price they think helps them make a profit.
I think people don't know much about why prices are what they are, and why ebooks are priced at full MSRP all of the time, but I think they know when they are too high. Artificially inflating prices and price-fixing (I'm sorry, I believe that is basically what this is, a price-fixing agreement between companies) leads to trouble.
Inflicting aggravating DRM schemes on people and using cross-company price fixing will lead to increased piracy rates. Same thing that happened to the music companies in the late 90s and early part of this decade. Ebooks are even smaller and easier to pirate. They're just begging for trouble.
You can't depend on older folks who don't know how to copy/paste files to a USB device forever.