Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
There is a certain amount of fungibility in book purchasing. A Twilight book bought at Amazon is pretty much interchangeable with one bought in Barnes & Noble. If Little Brown ceded publishing rights to Haper & Collins, there would be a certain fungibility between the Little Brown release and the H&C release.
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Books
in general are
NOT fungible. A specific book title
may be fungible (e.g. two Twilight paperbacks in ~mint condition).
But the argument quoted in the first post tries to make the case that books in general are fungible, so even if publishers are screwing you on a few titles you can substitute for a lower-priced book elsewhere. But the guy is obviously economically ignorant (or a liar). By the way, I wonder if he'd be willing to trade his books in a commodity exchange - I'd be particularly interested in books futures derivatives
Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeB1972
So to see if anyone was harmed by the agency model just check how many (agency published) new first time authors books were bought compared to the same time the previous year.
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When it comes to our favorite authors (and best-selling authors are always
someone's favorite authors), most people demand curves have a
price elasticity < 1. Even if Stephen King's books were to double in price overnight, his total sales wouldn't fall in half.