Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
Read the Tobias Buckell piece. His is the clearest, sanest breakdown of this whole thing that I have seen.
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Really? Sorry, I have to disagree. He's made a
basic error (Actually, several).
"During the 70s the government tried to put artificial prices on gas, resulting in shortages as hoarding occurred."
"That’s why your gas, milk, and other items aren’t pegged to a maximum price ceiling."
But why? Oh right, Scarcity. Which does not apply to ebook sales. The marginal costs are
minimal. (Oh, the setup cost is high, but once you have the eCommerce platform, website etc. running? Right.)
Also, if Macmilian want to sell direct via their own store they're perfectly entitled to price how they want to. That's why many companies
DO bear the costs involved in selling direct. They're trying to have their cake (controlling pricing)
and eat it (not having to handle the webstore, etc.)
Also, he's quite right his online sale volumes are low...but Eric Flint addressed that with the free library talks a long time ago didn't he. It boosted Eric's sales of OLD books quite nicely. Baen have already shown that low pricing and no DRM sells much better than the expensive DRM-ridden books he's pushing. And it sells not only ebooks, but print books. That he didn't see the same jump when he offered a book for free shows that the DRM (and format!) *is* a major issue.
The "we must recoup NOW" school of thought is ignoring the fact that costs STAY marginal. You never have to pulp ebooks, and you can sell them for 20 years with the same minimal marginal costs.
"While some authors have done the same, have you seen publishers treating consumers the same way as the RIAA?"
No, even the RIAA were not insane enough to use geographical restrictions.
tldr version: I reiterate my stance that Cory Doctorow has done the only take I'd call reasonable on this so far.