[rcentros]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Do you have a citation for the word you put in quotes? I can't recall it being said here. And if I ever came close to thinking it, it has nothing to do with pricing, but rather with how they were treating low-wage workers.

Amazon's lowest wage labor pool is made up of Kindle Direct Publishing authors. A bit sad, yes, but evil, no.

First, forget the lawyerize. When I put "evil" in quotes I was doing a written version of the "rabbit ears" people use to emphasize the word. So don't fixate on it.

Second, yes Amazon authors may be paid less, but these authors weren't getting paid anything at all before they found a new market where they actually got a chance to be published. Isn't this what the open market is supposed to be about? And, as mentioned here by others, the publishers and authors actually made LESS (not more) under the Apple Collusion scheme.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If a publishing executive was aware of MobileRead, he or she might reasonably believe that the eBook format is preferred by readers. However, I don't think they go by such anecdotal evidence as much as facts and figures from marketing surveys. And based on those they set the prices.

But is it really true that the publishers want to set the price of eBooks and paper books at the same level? To find out, check web sites of publishers that sell their books directly. If you check out a few titles here, you might be surprised at the eBook to paper price ratio a publisher chose when it was totally under their control:

http://books.simonandschuster.com/bestsellers

Okay closer to what a paperback costs. Again, an eBook requires ALMOST NO cost in publishing and distribution. That's the main point. And, again, eBooks can't be legally resold or donated to the library or passed on to friends -- so AGAIN -- you will naturally end up selling more eBooks than paper books. So where does the publisher make more money, selling a hardback book for $18.50 or TWO eBooks for $10 each?

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Why don't readers pay a penny more than the price on a book label? Is that greed? Why should a publisher leave any more more on the table than I do?

Because in an OPEN MARKET people find the best bargain. Or, quite possibly, because not everyone can afford an extra $3 more for an eBook. (Which is really the figure we're talking about here, isn't it?) $3 is significant jump in price, when you're talking about a $10 item.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If Hachette made life-saving drugs, or food staples, I would see some moral responsibility to keep down prices. But I do not need books to survive. This is especially true because I have freedom to read any book I want through library borrowing, including inter-library loan. So the harm to the public of high book prices is, it seems to me, no more than a transient feeling of impatience. It seems to me they have much more responsibility to their employees, authors, and maybe even some stockholders (like pension funds) than to their customers.

Boy, are you turning the truth on its head or what? It's not that the colluders raised prices, it's that they colluded (the Big 6 and Apple) to raise prices. That's anti-trust. That's one of the reasons the Justice Department exists, to keep "supposed" competitors from colluding to artificially raise prices instead of openly competing for the market. That's evil -- no quotes this time so as not to confuse you.

You may not think that colluding is immoral, but your opinion (or my opinion) on this subject is really not relevant. Our country has laws against collusion, so morality or immorality (I think it is immoral) is beside the point -- it is illegal. Nuff said.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Average publisher profits margins are much lower than for Microsoft or Apple, but I don't see people asking why Apple needs to sell an iPad for so much. The answer, I think, is that Apple has no more or less moral right to its money than do its customers.

As for Apple selling iPads for too much, apparently you haven't seen me write on the subject. I think their profit margin is insane -- and I've never bought an Apple product because of it. But here's the difference. Since Apple is the only company making iPads, it does not collude with anyone else to sell them for too much -- and they do compete against Android tablets -- which is why their prices (and profit margins) have fallen to some extent. Open competition works that way.

As for Microsoft, again, no one else makes Windows but they have been taken to court for anti-trust issues in the past because they used their OS monopoly to gain monopolies in other products. And Microsoft lost those cases -- though the Justice Department merely slapped them on the wrist.

So, yes, people have noticed and do talk about Apple's price gouging and Microsoft's anti-trust issues.