Quote:
Originally Posted by charleski
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So presumably you reject the idea that publishers should decide when to release a mass-market paperback as well? How dare they!
Consistency doesn't seem to be the strong suit here...
Agency-pricing is not a good thing, but it's Amazon's fault for trying to act the bully. And with the market in the state that it is, agency-pricing just happens to benefit them immensely, strange isn't it?
In the old days:
Book comes out in hardback, but you don't think it's worth the cost, so you wait a year and get the paperback.
Now:
Book comes out at full-price, but you don't think it's worth the cost, so you wait a year and get the discount version.
What's changed? Nothing
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I don't have a problem with publishers setting the list price for the book and telling the retailer they pay 30% of that to the publisher. The retailers can then fight it out for what they actually sell it for.
I reject the publishers setting a fixed retail price and telling the retailers they can't sell below it. This gives all the disadvantages of competition (multiple format incompatibilities, exclusive deals etc...) and none of the benefits.
I personally think that the windowed pricing is an artifact of physical books sales and is not necessary when selling electronic copies. It made sense to drop the price to get rid of your physical inventory and then introduce cheaper physical copies after you'd recovered costs (in the gravy zone). I don't have a problem with the windowed pricing but I do think it's stupid and will only drive more people to alternatives.