Quote:
Originally Posted by yankgirl
I worked at a publishing company for 15 years. While I agree the pricing for the eBook versions have gotten a bit out of hand, it's up to the seller (amazon, B&N) to set the price of the hardcover book. If the "list price" of a book is $25.99, the publishers will sell it to bookstores at a discount (if my memory serves me right - Amazon got a 60-70% discount of list price) The bookstore then sets the price of the HC or PB. Amazon is just as guilty as the publishers when it comes to pricing.
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This isn't specifically targeted at you, Yankgirl, but this REALLY ticks me off.
MSRP on (hardcover) books is usually $20-25+. However, they rarely sell for that. That means, publishers are padding the MSRP and then selling them cheaply enough the discounters can still afford to sell at that discount. You indicate this with the 60-70% discount.
It reminds me of snack sellers packing snack chips in giant bags and when you open them there's a sorry handful sitting in the very bottom, with that smug little comment "Contents may settle during shipping".
!@#$ you, Frito-Lay. You *know* the bag the Doritos come in is 2-3x the size of the contents, you're trying to convince me to buy a big bag when I'm hungry. All it does is piss me off, because I have no clue how many chips I'm getting for the money. The book publishers _know_ the books will not retail for $25.99, and they're hoping I'll buy the books for the deep-discount price of $14 or $15, or whatever the final retail price is where I'm buying.
Why effectively lie to customers about what they expect to make on each book, and then whine that people don't "understand" the value they're representing when they set the agency price for ebooks higher than they know retailers will sell the dead tree books.
I know the value they're representing, but so do they. If they expect a book to actually _retail_ for $14.00, then publishers should sell it to the distributor at a high enough rate that they (the distributor) has to sell it for something like that price to make any money. If publishers sell dead tree editions cheaply enough that distributors can price them down below the ebook editions, it's the publishers faults that the distributors do.
Just like the chip makers should stick their chips in bags just a little larger than the volume of the contents. I already love your product, just let me know what I'm expected to pay and what I'm getting. Stop lying to me because your marketing department is telling you how much more you'll make off me if you do.