Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
It seems to me that you are equating consumers as a whole with the minority of planetary readers who buy books the same year they are published.
The traditional system where books are only available in expensive hardcover editions at first, and gradually become available at lower prices through paperback publication, the used book market, and libraries, was characterized by extraordinary social justice. Consumers who could afford to pay top dollar got the book first, but their reading experience wasn't materially superior to that of the less affluent. Just the timing was different.
|
ebooks are not the same products as pbooks, whether hardback or paperback. Publishers who want to gouge ebook readers as opposed to pbook readers don't really want to discriminate between when the ebook is bought.
I don't really care about the prices of pbooks. It doesn't help me.
Quote:
|
Is that model threatened? Maybe. But maybe not. Amazon-like tactics don't seem to have been the salvation of Borders and Barnes & Noble. And publishers, while swinging from profit to loss to profit from year to year, still seem generally more profitable than Amazon. Hachette and Random House may yet survive by making money at publication date while letting the world's less affluent folks in on the game just a few years later.
|
The common delusion that a company which doesn't have a war chest is not profitable? I would be more inclined to think Amazon is generally less profitable if they didn't keep on growing their business so much. They seem quite profitable to me.
Wall Street may be upset that Amazon isn't handing over the dough, but that doesn't automagically translate as "Amazon isn't very profitable".