Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonkchapman
I'm guessing it's because MobiPocket is acting as both a distributor and a retailer. They can't underprice their own reseller network. In the paper world, it would be like Ingram having its own bookstore chain (or when B&N tried to buy them).
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This post shows precisely one of the main reasons commercial ebooks have been such a failure until now; people just do not want to pay much for econtent so at current prices there is a huge spread (bid-ask) in the market; usually in such cases someone steps in the middle lowering the price, offering new "bells and whistles" to increase the bid and so on...
Unfortunately for ebooks this would need much lower markups on cover price by retailers and they have no incentive...Until publishers sell directly (like Baen does - very important reason for their success) or find retailers for their ebooks that take a more reasonable markup it will be very hard to increase the market for ebooks (for example in music CD baby sells mp'3 of independent artists and takes 9% of cover price for mp3's)