Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
I think the idea that the big 5 are trying to keep prices high so people will buy more paper books is an oversimplification. I suspect there's much more to it than that and that it's much more about simply keeping book prices high.
My guess is that publishers are afraid Amazon's discounting will eventually bring the normal price for new books down and they'll eventually find themselves getting their share of $10 books instead of $15 books.
I doubt they really care whether people buy ebooks or paper books as long as they pay high prices.
Actually that's probably an oversimplification as well. They probably would prefer people buy paper books because most of those have a limited lifetime and ebooks stay available forever and keep going down in price, competing with higher priced paper book.
But I think their real concern isn't ebooks vs paper, it's high prices vs low prices.
I think the publishers are playing a losing game but I'm not sure there's a winning game available to them. The sky is falling and they're reacting.
Of course no-one knows how this will all play out but I suspect that in a few years book prices will be lower and large publishers will be making less money per book. It's sure in their best interest to try to put that off as long as possible.
Barry
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Your limited lifetime makes no sense.
If HarryT buys a paper book, he can loan it to Diap, Don, Paul, George and Ringo. Or he could sell it to you. Or he could donate it to a thrift store where I might pick it up for less than a dollar.
That is 8 people to one paper book.
However, if HarryT buys the ebook, he might could loan it once.
So 6 of the others and maybe all 7 would have to buy the ebook themselves.
Therefore the argument of the big 5 wanting everyone to buy paper does not hold up profit wise.
I figure the reason they want to set the price on ebooks boils down to the fact that they more than likely get a set percentage on ebook sales. It might be 50% or it might be 70%.
On physical books, they get a set price not based off sales.
If you are guaranteeing me say $7.70 a book (made up number), if you want to discount it, go for it because my money stays the same.
Now I don't know about most people but if someone is selling something for me for a percentage, I don't want that someone to be able to lower the price willy nilly.