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I think the boycott is a great idea, my problem is their targeting the wrong company. They should be targeting the publishers.

Somebody here posted that Amazon takes 65% of the sales. Yet amazon also tends to price their eBooks down 40% from the suggested retail price. That means on the average book they are only taking in 25% profit. It think that is very generous It's the greedy publishers that have inflated the price of a eBooks.

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

I wouldn't call it a boycott though. This is totally mis-appropriating a term that is political and socially critical in nature and applying it to a practice that is not actually thought out that politically or critically. We shouldn't call it boycott when the act is merely the same as visiting a grocery story and seeing a jar of jam is too expensive for our budgets so we leave the jar of jam on the shelf instead of buying it. That's not boycotting.

Here is the def of a boycott (link)
1. to combine in abstaining from, or preventing dealings with, as a means of intimidation or coercion: to boycott a store.
2. to abstain from buying or using: to boycott foreign products.

Originally Posted by dealjunkie

While I personally think the boycott is a bit silly, I believe it's more complicated than a quick 'just don't buy it'. The fact is that a lot of users would buy the book if the price was low, giving publishers extra money they were never going to get in the first place. Ebooks give publishers far more flexibility to experiment with pricing models, but that experimentation hasn't happened yet.

If nothing else, this boycott raises an issue that is yet to be resolved, and I like it only for the fact that it might force a much needed discussion in the publisher-retailer circle.

Good points, but I disagree with you here. If a person outright decides not to buy an eBook because it's too expensive then the publishers think that eBooks are not selling well and there is no customer intereste. However if the community puts in an organized boycott then the publisher/bookstore knows it is being punished and can deciced to take corrective action, knowing that there is interest.

On the pricing experiment. I don't see it happening. The publishers are very greedy here. What I've seen recently is quite the opposite of your opinion. Publishers across the board have repriced eBooks to cost as much or only slightly less that their most expensive books. For example Simon and Schuster had great eBook prices, they here lower than the pBook with and additional 30% off. Now they cost JUST as much as a pBook.

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