Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
Whist I agree with you about Indies, I think the same applies to tradpubs, at least in relation to ebooks.
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No question that tradpubs should be pricing to support and build up author brands. But they don't. They price as if each author is an established and dominant brand for their genre/category (a Roberts or a King) with an eye to maximizing launch window revenue. They do not seem to care overmuch about the fate of midlisters and new authors and have only now begun to talk about possibly some day using lower introductory pricing for new authors, mostly because of external criticism.
Given that they seem satisfied with the status quo they themselves created I wouldn't expect change and, again, going back to the context of the speech, the Kobo Writing Life chief is urging Indies to join the cartel pricing structure instead of undercutting it.
The issue I see isn't one of regional pricing disparities in general but of singling out two specific markets, out of the dozens Kobo serves, to *publicly* suggest discriminatory pricing. Not because of currency issues or of higher costs of doing business in the region, but rather suggesting that Indies follow the example of the local publishing cartel instead of pricing low for competitive advantage.
I won't even try to speculate on their reasoning but I do wonder why he didn't suggest higher prices elsewhere, say the european regions or the US or UK. Just AU and NZ.