Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Amazon wanted to set the new book price at $9.99. Well, of COURSE that was a popular idea for most anyone except the publishers. After the shakeout...the publishers have set the new book price at $14.99 for the ebook version and $17.99 (or thereabouts) for the hard back. It's still cheaper than the original "new book window" price. This notion that nobody is going to pay $14.99 when they used to pay $20-$25 is silly.
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Yes, the publishers colluded with Apple to raise the price of eBooks, even though eBooks are much, much cheaper to produce and distribute. And, when paperback books come out, eBooks don't drop in price. So, at the urging of Apple the publishers conspired to raise their profit margins through collusion. That's Apple's
modus operandi, higher net profits per unit. But, as Apple has also found with iPad and iPhone sales, higher net profit margins don't guarantee higher sales or a larger chunk of the market share. And, apparently, some of the publishers have figured this out and are lowering their eBook prices (in addition to putting limits on selling of eBooks to libraries) in an attempt to curtail borrowing. In other words, their original greed has turned around and bit them on their hind-ends.
Also they've managed to create more independent competition and, what is probably more frightening to the big publishers, big authors are now starting to leave their fold. See the thread about Koontz (and others) moving to Amazon Publishing.
Again, the big publishers could have kept both high sales and high profit margins (and kept their established authors). But they allowed to Apple lure them with dreams of higher levels of net profit. And now one of the costs is that more and more people are borrowing new releases (instead of buying them).
Gee, nobody could see that coming. Well, at least no one not short-circuited by greed.