Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Obviously price matters. It is not even a question of why an Indie is able to price lower than a publishing house. When buying a book, the store matters, the service matters, the buying experience matters. Take the price out of the equation, there is no longer any need to shop around. There is now only the question: is this book worth the asking price to get it now and here, or go to the library and wait. More than likely you get your book checked out before the publisher decides to run any kind of sale.
Agency pricing does hurt when it is only applied to ebooks and not pbooks as well. If it were possible to enforce agency on pbook, do you honestly believe it would be in the best interest of publishers? If not, why is it okay to treat ebooks different.
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You note that ebook prices for the big five tend to be a bit below the current price of the paper version (either hard back or paper).
As far as agency goes, agency was designed to solve a specific problem, i.e. Amazon using their profits from other businesses to price specific best seller books below cost at a time where the price of ebooks hadn't been set in the customers' mind. It was something that could only be sustained for a short time, but that specific time was when customers' expectations were being set.
After about 14 years, I think that price point (i.e. a bit below the paper price) has been set in the customer's mind. The publishers have set the floor of what the price of a book is by what they charge the stores. You likely are not going to see anyone try to sell ebooks at a loss again.
Agency pricing for paper books wouldn't really make much sense. The paper price is already set in the customers' mind. Yes, you have discount book stores. They serve a purpose, i.e. once a print run is done, that cost is sunk. The publishers can do one of two things with the remainders, they can either destroy them or sell them to discount whole sellers to try to salvage at least something for them.
Frankly, I think the only reason that we still have agency pricing is because the publishers don't trust Amazon.