Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
This is the "books are fungible" argument - if books are interchangeable, then lower priced books will sell better than expensive books. This should serve, then, to drive prices down. But if books aren't fungible, if some books do indeed have a higher value than other books, then publishers would charge more for books seen as more valuable - books by name authors will be more expensive than books by non-big-name authors. this is, in fact what's happening, which proves to me that publishers don't really believe that books are fungible after all. Like so much else, they're trying to have it both ways.
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Something is fungible when it can be substituted for another such thing. The key point about fungibility is that the substitution involves the object serving some purpose, or having a value placed on it. Thus, an object is only fungible with respect to some value system. Most pbooks are fungible with respect to making a fire. Different people value books for different reasons. Some people only want to be entertained, while others may want to learn something.
It may be useful to consider automobiles. In certain respects they are fungible, as they can be used to get you from one place to another. However, in other respects they are not, as a Smart Car does not drive like a Ferrari.
If books were not fungible in any way, then a great book could demand a very high price, such as $1,000. We do not see such prices. In fact, most newly released pbooks have a very similar price. I believe that the prices are close to one another because they are fungible to some readers and this causes competition amongst the books.