Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Heh.
Simple test: explain *why* I should pay *more* for a rights-limited ebook than a paperback edition.
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You shouldn't, and that is one of my complaints about ebooks regardless of pricing, but that isn't the issue you raised. You said and argued on behalf of Amazon's $9.99 cap and the need to have a good excuse to go higher.
I agree with you that it should be a market issue. Hachette should price its books at whatever price it wants -- $4.99, $10.99, or $55.99, or any other number -- and I will decide whether to buy it. That is a whole lot different than Amazon deciding that Hachette should not price anything above a certain price point.
If we are in fact in agreement that the market should decide by consumers either buying or not buying a book, then we should both be in agreement with Hachette. If we think, instead, that someone other than the market or the producer of the goods should set the
producer's price, then we should be in agreement with Amazon.
Neglected in that argument is the question of whether a producer should be able to set the terms under which a retailer can sell the producer's product; that is, should the producer be able to say "if you want to sell my products, it must be on an agency basis"? If we agree that a producer should have that right, then we should also be able to agree that the retailer should be able to choose not to sell the producer's products and a producer should be able to choose to not sell to a retailer.