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Originally Posted by mcl
No, that's not clear at all. They have mentioned that they MAY reduce the price, at some unspecified future date. You are assuming it will be after a certain time period, or day-and-date with the TPB or MMPB, or what have you.
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Dynamic pricing is how the book industry -- and most media industries, in fact -- work. The threat to delay Amazon's access was clearly linked to a desire to maintain a higher priced for a temporary period; if they wanted $15 permanently, they would have threatened to cut off Amazon altogether. John Sargent has even explicitly stated that's what they will do. The "concrete evidence" is in the existing pricing structures: high-priced hardcovers (for authors whom they expect to sell well), followed by trade and/or mass-market paper at a lower cover price. So, I'm not seeing the "zomg $15 forever" position as particularly credible.
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Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
Are ebooks really cannibalizing hardback sales?
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Absolutely.
At this point, Amazon claims that when a book is available in both hardcover and ebook format, 6 out of 10 sales of that title will be the ebook version -- and that doesn't include the free books. I don't think you can justifiably say that every Kindle sale is a lost hardcover sale; but it would be absurd to suggest that
none of those were lost hardcover sales.
It's possible that book buyers are just spending the money they save on other books. But it's also possible they are buying something else (DVD's, music etc) or not spending the money. Given the price difference though, there is little reason to doubt that some people are purchasing the ebook version instead of the hardcover.
As to the one-star reviews: Aside from the fact that even 100-150 irate Kindle users are statistically insignificant, and that the hardcover pretty much sold out, it's clear that quite a few of those were by people who had
no interest in buying the book in the first place, and were just upset that the ebook was delayed. So, I'm not really seeing that as a reliable indicator of anything other than buyer discontent (and petty discontent, imo, given that the delay was about a month) over the delay of the ebook.