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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
So he "orders" them one by one, and? It's till not much of a difference: producer (publisher) -> en gros merchant (distributor) -> en detail merchant (reseller) -> customer (reader)....
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It's a huge difference.
With paper, the retailer pays up front for the books, stores them, transports them. Each copy in inventory is, in a sense, a liability that needs to get out the door as quickly as possible, and carries financial risks for the retailer.
With digital, the retailer has not purchased an item that is gathering dust in a warehouse; the retailer is taking substantially less risk. They are basically only acting as a front door for the reader to have one convenient place to find and purchase their digital books.
It's a valuable process, and retailers ought to be compensated for it. But there is nothing inherent in that process which requires that the retailer, and only the retailer, has the right to set the price. Given how the status quo has also produced lots of inequities and anti-competitive behavior, that agency pricing levels the playing field for retailers, and is a better reflection of digital commerce, I really do not see the basis for proclaiming this is somehow "fundamentally wrong" for any reason other than that a) it's different and b) some, but not all, prices are higher.
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Self-published? Why, if you're buying from the author he can ask for any price he likes.
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Why is that OK for an author, but wrong for a publisher?
After all, ultimately you're just adding one intermediary, to which the author has granted a lot of latitude in exchange for advances, royalties and resources (editing, marketing etc). It is still, essentially, the rights holder setting the price.
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
And talking about Smashwords: if they suddenly decided to want to sell your book for less than your asking price (while covering the difference out of their own pocket), they should certainly be allowed to do that.
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Why not? Letting the author/small pub set the price has been the modus operandi for those companies for years now.
If it's unacceptable for a large publisher to set the price, it ought to be unacceptable for a small publisher or individual. Clearly that is not the case, since no one howled about the "unfairness" of self- and small publishers setting prices, and lauded the control that these services offer the content creators and rights holder.
And again: Lots of digital goods get the exact same treatment. How can it be acceptable for a developer to set the price (regardless of their size), but it isn't for books?
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Perception? That's a reality. Have you kept an eye on Random House titles? Prices for all of them, without exception, rose significantly on the 1st of March. Care to speculate why that might be?
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Because they believed that Amazon was eviscerating the value of their works.
The reason why I said
partly based on reality is that if you look at agency priced books that are a year old, quite a few have gone down from an initially higher price of $14 to $10.
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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
That's akin to saying "if shit tasted like chocolate nobody would mind eating it". Possibly true, but completely missing the point.
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No, it's an assertion that people are masking and/or rationalizing their price sensitivities behind a criticism of the process. Post hoc moralizing is a routine process.
Most people have no clue and do not care how the prices are set. They see a number, decide whether or not it's acceptable, and go from there.