Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Right. Given under the "new" model the actual total money going to the publisher will be the same, except with a lower "list price", so they need to pay out less to their authorsand are increasing their actual take, at the expense of the author (and of course, charging the public more).
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Do you
know how much Macmillan was getting from Amazon at the $9.99 price?
No, you don't, and neither do I. The best we can do is
guess, and, clearly, the guesses that people have bandied around have been coloured by their opinions.
OTOH, it's no secret that Amazon has been
pushing for deeper discounts on titles for a long time now. It's no secret that Amazon's latest profits have jumped 71% on the back of a 42% rise in revenue, and that the previous quarter saw a 62% rise in profit from a 28% rise in sales. With profits rising faster than sales, it doesn't look like they're engaging in selling a great deal of stuff at a loss. And yet Amazon claims that it's selling more books for the Kindle than ever.
Amazon's stubborn refusal to abandon the $9.99 price has hurt it (this petulant little foot-stamping episode is worthy of a six-year-old), and more importantly, it has hurt
us. The major publishers have long made it clear that they need more flexibility in ebook pricing to reflect changing sales windows, but Amazon didn't want to co-operate. The only thing Amazon has managed to achieve is to reduce the perceived value of books in the eyes of the public, as has been amply demonstrated here and elsewhere.
But what's worse, we now have an industry that will transform to agency-pricing (you can be sure all the other majors will climb on board ASAP). Wow, THANKS AMAZON! If you're bitching about pricing now, be prepared to bitch much louder in a year's time when the only way to get a discount is through a complicated loyalty scheme.
The threat here is
not $14.99 pricing. The threat is the elimination of retail competition.