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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Amazing how many people still cling to this story line as an excuse. Amazon was selling ebooks at a price point ($10) to get market share. Once the competition was out of the way and they had 80% market share, they stopped caring about that price point. When a new book comes out in hardbook, most of the time, the ebook is priced less than the printed book. For example, a hardcover copy of Monster Humter Memoir: Saints is $19 (list price $24). The kindle version is $9.99.
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The Agency Price scheme determines what Amazon HAS to sell these publisher's eBooks for. They can no longer discount them on their own. Amazon already had the lion's share of eBook sales and were STILL selling eBooks for $10 UNTIL Apple and the Big Five, while colluding, talked about how they "abhorred" the Amazon $10 eBook price and how they were going to raise it to $12.99 or $14.99. Jobs announced that he would raise prices eBooks right from the beginning. So, quite bluntly, this is not an "excuse" it's just the facts. You're the one who appears to be engaging in historical "revisionism."
Can't get much clearer than this (from Cote's decision) quoting what Jobs said when introducing the iPad...
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When asked by a reporter later that day why people would pay $14.99 in the iBookstore to purchase an e-book that was selling at Amazon for $9.99, Jobs told a reporter, “Well, that won’t be the case.” When the reporter sought to clarify, “You mean you won’t be $14.99 or they won’t be $9.99?” Jobs paused, and with a knowing nod responded, “The price will be the same” and explained that “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon because they are not happy.”
With that statement, Jobs acknowledged his understanding that the Publisher Defendants would now wrest control of pricing from Amazon and raise e-book prices, and that Apple would not have to face any competition from Amazon on price.
The import of Jobs’s statement was obvious. On January 29, the General Counsel of S&S [Simon & Schuster] wrote to [Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn] Reidy that she “cannot believe that Jobs made the statement” and considered it “[i]ncredibly stupid.”
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The end of $10 eBooks, engineered by Apple – not Amazon's decision.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
People pay what they are willing to pay. It's been that way in the book industry for a long, long time. Some people buy hard backs, some people buy paper backs, some people buy used and some people use the library (i.e. free). Ebooks hasn't changed that dynamic, it's just changed the rationalization process.
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And that was my point. I was "willing to pay" the $10 (or less, on sale) for eBooks from Amazon (never borrowed eBooks at that point) but not now with the Apple/Big Six Agency collusion pricing scheme. I still contend that the publishers would probably make more money selling eBooks for $10 because many more would buy them instead of borrowing them from the library. They've figured this out in the movie and music industry.