Quote:
Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Raising prices wouldn't be without precedent though, iTunes did that when the went DRM free.
For Apple, the real justification for raising prices was that they were offering a more valuable product (music files without the annoying restrictions) so people were willing to pay more. I doubt they did anything but profit from that move, even though "sharing" of music files must be at least as prevalent as sharing of book files.
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What happened with iTunes is that the publishers wanted to increase prices (which they couldn't do without Apple's agreement) and Apple wanted to remove DRM (which they couldn't do without the publisher's agreement). So the compromise was that the publishers allowed DRM to be removed and Apple allowed the publishers to charge 69c, 99c, or $1.29.
Apple had wanted to remove DRM for some time, because it makes things easier for the customer (and of course because it's not Apple's copyrighted music being sold). I suspect that e-book retailers, whether Amazon or B&N, feel about the same about DRM.