Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
The $1.50 price is wrong, at least for new titles.
I may be wrong but my understanding is it's not based on a percentage. The publisher sets a wholesale price, and the retailer goes from there. For brand-new books (what would normally be a hardcover) the wholesale price is $10 or more; so ebook retailers occasionally lose money on the $9.99 ebook.
IIRC someone at Amazon (possibly Bezos) stated that some ebooks are loss leaders, but so are some of the big hardcovers, especially with the current price war.
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I think you misunderstood where the percentage is applied. You're right-Amazon doesn't pay a percentage, they pay whatever the publisher demands. But if I understand what was said about the percentage correctly, the publisher sets their wholesale price-what Amazon pays-at a percentage of their suggested retail price. And (according to earlier statements in this thread) that percentage is 35-50%. But it's of the publisher's srp-not of what Amazon actually sells the book for. (And, just as Amazon will offer loss-leaders, so might publishers. I don't really know about that. These days it would make sense that even wholesalers would pay attention to marketing-but so many publishers seem to live so far back in the past that I won't count on that.)