Quote:
Originally Posted by binaryhermit
But those $14.99 ebooks pretty much stay $14.99 forever outside of infrequent sale prices.
I mean, "The Everything Store" came out in 2013 and is still $12.99.
But yeah, I think a huge reason the ebook revolution "died" was agency pricing, or more specifically, agency pricing being used to prop up dead tree books at the expense of ebooks.
But without agency pricing ereaders might still be $300+ for the base model, so...
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Oddly enough, the paperback price and the kindle price for The Everything Store is exactly the same $12.99. Paperback books don't have agency pricing. If the books were priced wrong, one would expect the paperback price to fall below the Kindle price, yet it doesn't. Of course, one can look at other paperback books. The first book of David Weber's Safehold series is $8.99 in paper and $8.99 on the Kindle. Looking at all the books in the series, there is a fair amount of fluctuation in both the paperback prices and kindle prices.
I have no idea what the logic behind kindle prices propping up paperback prices is. For the most part, I don't think people look at the kindle price and paperback price and say "Gee, if only the kindle price were lower, I would by the digital book. Instead, since they are the same price, I'll buy the paperback". I suspect that for most people who do read digital books, it the prices are equal, they prefer the digital copy.