Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
This is what the argument about ebooks and price point is all about. Is a J.A. Sutherland price point the same as a David Weber price point? Amazon would argue books is books. The publishers would argue that consumers buy based on the author and some books are worth more than other books. That matches their experience with the big selling authors carrying the book market.
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I don't personally have an issue with price point of ebooks*. Publishers large and small should feel free to price their books at what they think they can get. I can vote with my wallet. I don't mind only buying BPH titles from Amazon/B&N/Google.
I was defending the point that agency pricing
did hurt the independent ebookstores that sprouted up and thrived by being creative in the early days of ebook popularity.
An irony, since the BPH's argued that agency was intended to level the playing field and 'free' us (free them, more likely) from the oncoming monopoly of Amazon.
When I bought my Nook ST, one of B&N's selling points was that with the expandable storage you could buy books from them or elsewhere and still have room for them on your device.
There was a chance for ebooks to be similar to MP3s, where the store and the device wouldn't have to be married together. Agency blew it and shackled the big publishers even more to Amazon.
*One argument about the price point of books though. It already does exist in the world of paper books. Within a dollar or two variance (usually less than that) a Dean Koontz book will sell for the same price as a Stephen King book (I changed authors because I'm only vaguely aware of David Weber and am unfamiliar with J.A. Sutherland). Why should e-books work differently?