Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Selling books below cost is not a real market price. Amazon was threatening the pricing of the hardback books where publishers make most of their money. Of course the customer doesn't care if they get such a price break. Not in the shirt term anyway....just lie people were perfectly happy to buy cheap Japanese steel when they dumped it on the US market in order to run US steel companies out of business.
I am quite happy to buy a kindle book at less than the cost Amazon paid for it myself. I just understand why the publishers put a stop to it as it became clear that Amazon's business practice was threatening their main revenue source...the hard back book.
Yes, hard back booked are discounted. They are not discounted anything like Amazon's $10 price for every book on the NYT Best Seller's list all the time.
The market price is the price at which both the producer and the consumer are happy. Consumers were happy at $10 and would be even more happy at $1. However tie publisher has a higher number in mind. In time, there will be a new equillebrium found.
Lee
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Except there's more than one market, the wholesale and the retail. The retail price is not something the publishers have any right to control unless they want to stop wholesaling. That market has failed because the publishers have decided to favor one buyer over another. I don't understand why its legal to say I'm going to charge you triple because I like your competitor better. In theory the price is supposed to be the price for anyone who comes to you to buy.
The second market is the retail one, that's where amazon had an advantage, except nothing but profit margin or taking a loss prevented anyone form competing. The publishers before this were being paid either way so what right did they have to step is and deny the ability for a retailer to discount? This is the huge failing capitalism has compared to a free market. Capitalism controls the resources and denies anyone else the ability to compete, the market is cornered and controlled. While in a free or reasonably free market you buy as much as you need at the prices offered and don't have to worry about being punished for buying from someone else when they offer a better price.
In a free market if you need 100k widgets and one person has 15k to sell for $1 and another person has 500k for $2 you can buy the 15k $1 widgets and get the rest for $2. In a capitalist system if you buy those 15k widgets you may find those other 85k you need suddenly cost $5 for you and $2 for anyone else or perhaps for you they aren't available at any price. And *poof* widget monopoly.
Penguin has a monopoly and they are abusing it. I'd love to see the justice department look into this.