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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
The problem is the publishers saw this as spilling over beyond ebooks....
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That's because the issue IS going beyond ebooks. Ebooks are still a miniscule part of their business (less than 5%), but are cannibalizing hardcover sales and threatening the value of their product.
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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
I understand not wanting Amazon to control the ebook market - how has that worked out for music and Apple? Why is it okay for Jobs but not for Bezos? Or is it that they saw what happened to music, and its cash cow the album sale, and they don't want the same thing to happen to the hardback?
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1) For the publishers, Apple gave them exactly what they wanted: more control over pricing.
2) With music, Apple started with a highly restrictive pricing scheme. But over the last year or so, they have given the labels more control over pricing.
3) It's not
exclusively about "slowing down" ebook sales. It's about making sure their product still has value when ebooks become a bigger part of the market. It's also about making sure they can discount a book that's been out for a few months and still make some revenues off of it.
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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
This will definately slow the adoption of ebooks.
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I doubt it. In fact, giving the publishers what they want might actually encourage them to put out more titles in ebook format in a timely fashion, since they won't have to be quite so paranoid about losing high-margin sales and eroding the value of their product.
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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
I don't know if they have taken a large enough hold that they will survive.
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Ebooks will do just fine.
$15 is just the price for new ebooks; it's pretty clear that publishers will use dynamic pricing, e.g. drop the price of the ebook after the title has been out for 6 months or so. That's how hardcovers work -- I assure you, it doesn't cost 2x or 3x as much to print a hardcover as it does a paperback. They just happen to use a physical form to set up a tiered pricing structure. You charge more for high-demand titles, and when demand falls, you reduce the price in order to encourage more sales. It's just basic economics -- albeit without the artifice currently utilized by the book industry.
Even at $15 for a new ebook, they're cheaper, more convenient, more portable, and "greener" than paper. The market is not going to collapse in a fiery ball because they charge $5 more for a brand-new title for a few months.