Quote:
Originally Posted by dugong
Amazon generally brings down the prices sooner than B&N. Are they taking a loss, or are they negotiating better prices from the publisher?
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A little from Column A, a little from Column B...
Amazon has the clout to negotiate lower prices in a lot of cases. Also, for books not covered by the new "agency pricing" system, Amazon is willing to take a loss on the price in order to keep sales volumes high, and to convince people to look at Amazon first.
It looks like Roc Hardcover is not a branch of one of the "big 6" publishers, and not one of the 5 that switched over to agency pricing, so Amazon is free to lower the price to whatever they think will entice sales.
The version at BN is listed as being connected to Penguin, not Roc Hardcover; Penguin's one of the "agency price" publishers. (So maybe the author managed to sell ebook rights to two different publishers? Or maybe Roc is a subdivision of Penguin, but the book predates the agency contract so Amazon gets to offer it under the older terms?) Kindlebooks don't list an ISBN, so I can't compare the two.