Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I say this with all sincerity: as long as I didn't pay any more than than I was willing to pay for a luxury-type item ... I simply don't care what anyone else paid for it. Go them!
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I was at a Bill Cosby concert recently, and he said he refused to give away tickets just so he could perform in front of a full house. His reasoning was simple: he didn't want to have a paying customer have the guy next to him say, "Hey, did you get free tickets, too?"
Sales set an expectation of a lower price. Nobody buys a mattress at full price because they know that all the models will go on sale, and everyone wants to feel like they got a deal. So the real price of the mattress isn't the list price, but the sale price. If eBooks typically go on sale, the incentive is for customers not to buy them at full price but to wait for a sale. And if margins are tight enough at company X that they can't make money if the products go on sale, then they will not want to compete against company Y that can.
Apple couldn't make a $9.99 eBook work for their model. Too bad, they shouldn't have entered the market. Or they should have found a way to make their eBooks worth $12.99. After all, you can get a 10" tablet for 1/5 the cost of a new iPad, but new iPads sell like crazy because people believe they're getting value even at 5x the cost. Maybe get author exclusives, throw in a discount coupon for the movie adaptation of the book, or (gasp!) actually have eBooks formatted properly for the screen. They could have the monopoly on chess eBooks if they put a premium on proper formatting. Instead, Apple wanted to sell the same thing as everyone else, but be able to charge more for it. Which required collusion and price fixing.