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One thing many of us would really like from publishers, is transparency. But you could say the same for many things we buy, so unlikely to happen, especially as many profit models are based on hidden stuff ... they like to keep us in the dark ... means they can make all sorts of claims and no way to easily disprove them.
It was said earlier in this topic, that we should not be comparing physical books with ebooks, and while many of us don't agree with that, let's just do that for a moment, and use another equally as good comparison.
Let's compare Authors and Publishers.
Why is it, that many authors and publishers, can get away with doing the right thing and playing fair with prices, but others can't?
This is not an Indie vs Traditional question. There are those out there that publish physical and digital books, and do so with decent fair prices, and have been doing so for many years.
If their model was not working economically, they have had plenty of opportunity to change that model. In fact, they could make a plea and join the ranks of the over-pricers, and say it is not viable to be cheaper. The more in that camp, the harder for us to prosecute an alternative argument.
Myself personally, I can only draw one conclusion ... the same one many others have.
I'd love to see a breakdown of what it costs to make a book and why, and why there is a need to get extra profit from ebooks. Algorithms etc are often mentioned, but I have yet to see how they apply in this instance.
I'll be the first to admit, that not all books or authors are the same. That should be a given for most of us. But this argument that ebooks devalue books as a whole, is just lost on me. Sure ebooks devalue physical books, that's only logical. If more are buying ebooks and physical books are selling less, then of course they are devalued, because overall profit for them is less. That's the way of the world and the price of progress.
It's only natural, that physical books should start to cost more and probably already are. That of course will mean more will start to consider the cheaper ebooks, and eventually even less physical books sold. One day, physical books will very much become a niche market.
Nowhere in that model, is there a need to increase profits via ebooks. There is if you want to continue to provide physical books at current prices, rather than logically raise the price because you are selling less of them. So what we have is ebooks propping up the physical book market in many cases. I and many others think that is wrong, ethically and morally wrong.
Why should we subsidize the physical book market, when those readers should be moving toward digital like the rest of us have? If they don't want to do that, then by all means pay extra to have things your way, just don't expect the rest of us to pay for it.
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