Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonkchapman
Unless somehow Amazon ends up being the only one who can stand the $9.99 price for an extended period of time, which I sincerely doubt, there won't be any market cornering going on.
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That, of course, is the question. Amazon apparently disagrees with you, but it rests on two points: how long they can stand the $9.99 price (I'm sure they know that better than you) and how long it will take for them to corner the market (I'm not at all sure that your opinion on that isn't better than their's.)
FWIW I expect Amazon's attempt to fail & for them to abandon their $9.99 price point on most books. But much of that does depend on whether or not they go into publishing for themselves.
Here's a thought, maybe Amazon is working on better tools to help authors 'self-publish' their books. If so (and assuming they can restrict those tools to only authors who 'publish' thru Amazon) then they can lower their expenses without lowering payments to the authors. That might give the best result, but I'm not really hopeful. I think it's too innovative to occur to an MBA-but I'm not sure of Bezos' background, nor of how much direction he, personally, gives to the ebook effort. (Most CEO's would hire an MBA to manage the area, unless it was their 'pet' project.)
Geezer: FWIW I think we're in agreement on principle, our only disagreement is probably in the area of how much less ebooks should cost. I suspect it's more in the realm of 10% less than 30%, but am willing to be wrong.