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Originally Posted by HarryT
Other than the fact the you appear to believe that server farms cost nothing to run (a false assumption)
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Unfortunately for you, the false assumption is yours: That server costs impact primarily on publishers as opposed to sellers. How exactly is the price fixing dealt with by Amazon created by the expense of
publishers' servers, and how was having an online bookstore ever an incredible expense for publishers before the advent of eBooks? Most of the publishers I've dealt with talk about how much easier and cheaper online sales are -- it's the unpopularity of physical books that makes them complain.
Things are entirely the opposite of what you're suggesting: Amazon is willing to bring down pricing -- has indeed beseeched publishers to do so -- regardless of their server costs, as is and has Google. It's the publishers who create the artificial hike.
The cost of a server farm for content versus the costs of warehouses, manufacturing, etc.? Not even close in terms of expense. Ask Jude of Head-fi if he'd be willing to take down his servers and start a business dependent on physical manufacturing and warehousing. See what he says about that profit model versus the one he has now.
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There are other factors that you are failing to take into account, such as the fact that, within the EU, eBooks have, by law, to be subject to the standard rate of VAT for each country, whereas paper books can be discounted. Thus, in the UK, for example, paper books are zero rated for VAT, whereas eBooks are subject to VAT at 20%. . . .
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Even if we were talking about a true 20% price increase, and even if it applied within the States (the locus of the original OP's complaint), he and others are not talking about an increase that small (relatively), nor does it approach the price difference between virtual and physical production and storage.
So far, you have not made a convincing argument for what seems a somewhat solipsistic idea: that, because eBooks books are of greater value to
you, personally, publishers should be able to fix and increase eBook prices wherever they like.
I'm an editor who deals with professional writers (and have been one in the past), and I see what has been happening to those who have made a living from their books for years, so I have the modicum of an inkling of a clue where publishers' profits are actually going. Those writers who are not incredibly successful but have followings have done far better dealing with Amazon and other vendors directly than through the boardroom entities that were once their publishers. I'd love to be in the room when someone told [edit: removed names of actual writers in order not to raise issues] about the necessary cost of books from HarperCollins (with whom I've published as well, BTW). Some of the people I knew are still with HC, but I doubt they wish they were.