Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe
I've never understood why publishers cared if they were getting their asking price, unless they were selling the majority of their books in their own stores.
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It goes like this. You have a product you price at $30...and wholesale at $15...expecting the retailers to sell at $25. All is good. The customers know that the $30 retail price is never the one they pay and expect to pay approx $25 give or take a bit.
Retailer A decides to buy marketshare by pricing the book at $10 taking a bath on each book sold but they do so to drive the competition out of business. Or perhaps they have other merchandize they are making money on and losing money on books is made up on profits selling shampoo.
Why do the Publishers care? Are they not getting their $15 either way? Well, what happens when Company A runs Company B, C, and D out of business such that the Publishers becomes dependent on the only Company A to sell it's products?
What happens now that consumers are trained to expect brand new hard backs to come out for only $10. They become unwilling to pay the $25 they used to be willing to pay.
Then Company A, now that the competition is out of business...goes back to the publishers and says "we are no longer willing to pay a wholesale price of $15....but $7 for books".
The publisher can't just say "no" because the publishers other retailers are out of business....and it's customers have stopped being willing to pay $25.
Lee