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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
With paper goods, the retailer purchases the book from the publisher and resells it. As such, they have paid for it, they're taking more risk, so if they want to lose on the deal that's their choice. With ebooks, they're more an aggregator. It's a different process, a different relationship, thus a different pricing method.
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Not justified. It's really the same thing, dealer buys stuff for resale. In this case it's licenses instead of paper, but that's it.
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... while the retailer and publisher won't have the same incentives, the publishers can be almost as responsive to sales fluctuations as the retailers.
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You mean, make more ebooks, stock is running low?
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Also, as mentioned already, when an author or small publisher works through Smashwords or CreateSpace or a similar service, it is that author/small pub that sets the price. Same for the various App Stores, which allow publishers to set prices. How is this any different than agency pricing?
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Of course the publisher (or author) gets to set the price, it's their book after all. It's always been that way. What's new is that not only does the publisher get to set the price, they also get to decide the retail price the customer needs to pay, which really is none of their business. For the sale from publisher to first buyer, they can ask any price they want, but they are also dictating what price they need to charge upon resale.
Can you imagine that for regular consumer goods? I can't. It's anti-competitive, and, like all monopolies, bad for the customer.
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I do agree that in some cases prices can be too high for some buyers, but that is not a federal crime.
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Nobody said as much.