Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
I said "practical" monopoly - not monopoly. Amazon had an 80% share of the ebook market. Amazon was threatening the hard back book revenue as ebooks were taking off.
Of course people want $9.99 books when the new release hard backs are $20 and more. They'd be even happier with $5 ebooks. And why not $1 ebooks at the same time the publishers hope to sell those $20 hard backs?
The price was so low that Amazon sold millions of kindles in large measure on the thought that you could save money just on the difference between the hard back and ebook price.
There is no way that the publishers were going to stand for this. All of us who buy paperback books instead of hard backs have had to wait the usual year before we can read our books. Reading a "new release" book was something only people willing to shell out the hard book price could do -- or wait in queue at the local library.
Penguin's pricing will come in line with market reality. The $9.99 price was never "market reality". That was Amazon willing to lose money to capture market share.
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by rixte
The problem with this argument, .....
|
.... Is that it is completly wrong.
Publishers received the full amount of profit regardless of Hardbook or eBook sale. The price was set by the publisher and Amazon took the hit.
They fought two big fears, one they don't want to change. They'd be happy keeping the pbook model since it is what they know. Second they feared consumers would get use to the $10 price point and later demand that as a price point.
As for market reality I disagree as well. I've bought more books and read more because of the lower price point. The higher price reduces demand and is set by the inefficiency of the publisher. Price has nothing to do with what the market will bear. As a matter of fact, you will see priced continue to reduce since the market is correcting itself.
=X=