Quote:
Originally Posted by Fbone
How do we know ebook prices will be lower?
|
I don't quite understand the question.
I do think we know that Amazon will, if allowed, use its greater financial muscle to gain an eBook monopoly, while the sales of higher-priced paper books dwindle to near-nothing. During however many years its takes to crush independent bookstores and B&N, eBook prices will be lower.
Maybe Amazon would, like WalMart, continue to have a low price corporate culture even after putting virtually all the ma's and pa's out of business. But you can't have a boatload of non-bundled loss leaders forever. A more likely scenario is that predatory pricing is just a temporary tactic leading to much higher prices than before the battle.
Is this true:
Two years after the agency model came to bookselling, Amazon is losing its chokehold on the e-book market: its share has fallen from about 90% to roughly 60%.
If it is true, then the rest of what Turow writes pretty much follows.
If Amazon would stop competing with libraries through its Amazon Lending Library, and would stop directing advertising to get me to buy what I borrow from public libraries, I might feel a little more neutrality here.