Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Pbooks remain wholesale and Amazon is discounting them regularly and not just for promotional or clearance purposes. Rather, it is a strategic move they are making to take advantage of the enforced higher margin on BPH ebooks to increase their share of the BPHs' business, thereby making them even more dependent on them.
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If the BPHs want to remove the stranglehold Amazon has on them (which is, as you note, their own fault), the best thing they could do would be to get rid of DRM on eBooks. This would enable more competition between eBook stores, since it would no longer matter where you bought your book. Want to buy from Apple but read it on your Kindle? No problem, no DRM to strip and easy to convert. Want to read eBooks bought from Amazon, but don't have any app that'll read MobiPocket or AZW format? No problem, no DRM to strip and easy to convert. (And yes, I realize that there's probably a Kindle app for everything, including your toaster, but it's just an example.)
The recording companies did something similar to help loosen Apple's stranglehold on music sales. They dropped DRM and let Amazon (and others) open music stores selling non-DRM'd tracks. It helped a lot, although they waited too long and it was too little, too late for them. Unfortunately I suspect the same will happen with eBooks. The BPHs will eventually realize they need to do this to increase competition, but it'll be far, far too late to help them much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MGlitch
If you think the price of an ebook is too high, don't buy it. If enough of the market agrees with you, the price will eventually be adjusted. If not, then there are other (legal) options available to you, which would allow you to read the book.
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Well that's the problem. The BPHs, using agency pricing, are demanding that they set the prices even if the market won't buy them. Sales go down? Blame it on piracy, never on prices being too high. So definitely don't buy it if it's too high, but don't expect the prices to be adjusted as they would in a sane market.