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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
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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Not even close, as far as I know.
I have no idea how the schedule of payments works out. However I cannot imagine that a retailer is paying for a block of 10,000 copies of a title, selling those copies off, ordering more if too many are sold, and returning unsold copies.
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
You mean, make more ebooks, stock is running low?
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Very cute, but no.
I mean that one argument is that retailers are "better" at pricing goods than the publishers. However, the publishers will end up with as good, if not better, data than any single retailer, and should do about as good a job adjusting prices.
One major difference in incentives is that retailers will want to slash prices on certain books as loss leaders, and the publishers believe this is devaluing their product.
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
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.
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OK, but my point is: If it isn't the publisher's business, then who should set the price for self-published books?
We all seem to readily accept the premise that a small publisher who uses CreateSpace can set their own price, and hold to that same price on Pubit, Smashwords, Scribd and any other such outlet. (Also on services like Wiiware, Android Market, App Store, etc etc). Why is it OK for a small publisher -- including a self-published book that lands on the best seller lists -- but dastardly and unacceptable for a large one?
Conversely, why is it OK for Apple to set a flat cost of $1 per song? Was it wrong to give the record companies some latitude on price?
And why
isn't price the business of the publisher, when the retailers are destroying the value of their product with discounts and when disintermediation is a common practice?
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
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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Please re-read my post for several examples on how the status quo has, in fact, produced many consequences that might be characterized as anti-competitive -- e.g. large retailers can leverage the economies of scale to undercut smaller stores on pricing.
Ultimately the problem isn't really "manufacturers setting prices." The problem is that there is a perception (only partly based on reality) that agency pricing = higher prices. If agency pricing resulted in lower prices for new books, I'm convinced that no one would care in the slightest.