Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
If you look at the charts included in B&N's reply to the DOJ settlement proposal, you will see that pricing for hardcovers has dropped since agency pricing. The pricing comparison is limited to the Agency 5 books.
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I noticed that the number of hardcover titles release in the first three quarters shown in the chart were 650 and the number of titles released in the last 3 quarters shown in the chart were 1450. That's a massive year over year change. Do you think it's at all possible that the huge increase in output might have meant that publishers and/or B&N had to price some of those hardcover titles lower to get anyone to buy them? Supply and demand is Econ 101 after all. Suggesting that the Agency model was the sole reason for a small decrease in the price of hardcover books without examining what else happened in the marketplace at the same time is silly.
Perhaps what that chart really represents is a last ditch push by publishers to monetize titles in their pipeline as hardcovers before the ebook wave swamps them. Who knows? But I'm not buying B&N's spin without a heck of a lot more data than that chart.