Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
And if most readers choose to buy their books from Amazon because of lower prices or better service or whatever - that is good for the consumer. Eliminating price competition is bad for the consumer.
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Yet it is likely that there will be little to no price competition. Both Amazon and B&N, for example, list the preorder price for the J.K. Rowling ebook,
The Causal Vacancy, at $17.99. Not much competition in a book that is likely to be a giant seller.
I expect that there will be little price competition even if agency pricing is done away with for all publishers. In fact, I would guess -- and I admit I do not know, this is only a guess on my part -- that the pricing of the new Rowling book was done in anticipation of the settlement being approved and in preparation for Cote ultimately finding against the non-settlers. I expect that new books will be priced in the $28 to $35 range with most about $30, so as to prevent the $9.99 price from rising again.
I also suspect that with the requirement that ebooks have to be profitable across a publisher's line, not across an ebookseller's whole business, it will be significantly more difficult for ebooksellers to compete on price in the manner they did pre-agency.