Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
But we shouldn't celebrate when they use their retail dominance to force other publishers closer to their own mold.
|
Steve. Isn't this called competition? If Amazon is forcing anything isn't it by offering their customers what they want? Amazon is not a monopoly, but the BPH have imho long constituted an oligopoly of the worst kind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
Physicists writing books to be read by other physicists will fit into that "small number of specialized titles" exception, at least if only a small number of physicists write such books. But what about readers who didn't take college physics and want lots of popularized books on physics to choose from? As I read Amazon's statement, we are likely to be out of luck. Ditto when I want to read a middlebrow, 600 page, narrative history title that required worldwide research and four years to write. Do you really think that can plausibly cost little more than the six-months-to-write, no-research-required work of pure imagination? If not -- if you just want $9.99 as a baseline -- you should stop defending Amazon.
|
Academic publishing has long been a specialised area, usually with very high prices justified by the small numbers, and have no legitimate place in this discussion. Even if I am wrong in this and academics are going to exchange books amonst each other via Amazon, it will I'm sure come as no surprise to you that the mantra is "publish or perish" to anyone with tenure or seeking tenure. And some academic books with a small audience clearly should be an exception to $9.99.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
I quoted this one before, but I want to quote it again because, fjtorres, what ApK writes is much more consistent with Amazon's statement than your baseline concept. Don't have a PhD? Not interested in teaching undergraduates? Don't have the skills or inclinations to be a fundraiser? Don't want to be beholden to a right-wing, or left-wing, think tank? In that case, Amazon decrees that you can no longer be a research-oriented non-fiction author, no matter how many books you could sell, because Amazon wants you to fit into the $9.99 or less model used by authors who write multiple genre page-turners a year.
|
I mentioned above that imho academic publication is a specialist case, and that some academic books clearly should be an exception to Amazon's proposed $9.99 price point.