Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
...The article also talks about a subject that comes up here quite a bit, the marginal cost of ebooks, i.e. why pay for something that doesn't cost anything to reproduce?
My basic take is I totally get the convenience part. Being able to get almost any ebook that I want at one place is very compelling.
I don't get the marginal cost issue. I mean, I understand what it means and yes, I understand that it doesn't cost anything to reproduce an ebook. However, I don't understand how people do not acknowledge the cost of creating the book in the first place.
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In industries that operate in competitive markets competition normally drives the selling price of a product close to the marginal cost of the last unit of production. This, as we see, does not happen in the ebook market.
For two reasons that I am aware off ebooks are in a very non-competitive environment, the main one being protectionism. I will not say any more about that last nor what solutions (which include amending legislation) could exist in the market against that so as ebooks could become much cheaper, as emotive name calling will start.