Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

There's also no justification for Hachette raising their prices across the board 64% in Australia.

And given you'll actually always be able to get Stephen King for free, no reason at all for anyone to pay for books like that if they don't want to.

Your article was most enlightening btw. Many thanks for exposing the hypocrisy.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by JoeD

That doesn't prove agency pricing is working, you can infer very little from those lists. If agency books sold 1000x times more books than non agency (prior to agency introduction) and now sell only 500x as many, they'd still dominate the best seller lists despite a reduction in sales or growth.

Ps yes the 1000x was a arbitrary and ridiculous number for the example, I just wanted to point out that despite a decline in popularity you can still remain a best seller for a time, but the gap will be closing at a higher rate than it may otherwise have.

Amazon's statement however is based on actual sales data and growth rates extracted from that data. The best seller lists do not disprove anything stated in the amazon quote.

Its not my burden to prove its "working": its your burden to prove that agency pricing unduly depresses sales.
You are quoting, not real sales figures but conclusory statements by Amazon- the very entity those practices led to the adoption of agency pricing ! Hardly a disinterested party.

What those lists do prove is that the publishers were correct that the market price for bestselling ebooks was above the price that Amazon wanted to charge. If the publishers were wrong about that, then the current bestsellers wouldn't be bestsellers.

[Fbone]

What indication is there that retail ebook prices would drop if Agency pricing is removed?

[Ken Maltby]

What I remember from the posting of Amazon's comments:

Agency priced ebooks dropped in sales, after the introduction of Agency Pricing.

Non-agency ebooks sales have continued to rise.

Hardback pbook sales are also rising.

----------------

Perhaps that mostly reflects a greater attention to casual reading as a form of
entertainment, which may well be a consequence of the surge in ereading devices.
The Kindle ads, Fox news personalities book promotions, Oprah, ect...

So, in a time of a general increase in readership, it might be that a purely statistical view
of the Agency sales, gives an inaccurate reflection of the situation.

P.T. Barnum's "There is a sucker born every minute" was in reference to the Circus's
ability to attract customers once everyone has seen it. There will always be those who
are just getting their first ereading device. The devices will keep changing and
developing, but there need not be much change to ebook files to provide the ebooks
for these new readers. (the people, not the devices) The demand for the ebooks should
remain steady or continue to rise, despite the changes in devices that can read ebook
files. It is a genie out of its bottle, no going back, a critical mass of ereading public has
been passed.

Luck;
Ken

[bminata]

Well, idiocy knows no bounds. Can't wait to see the "big six" become the "big zero."

Originally Posted by abookreader

Kind of frightening to me how they've gone from insisting the eBook is just as valuable as a paper book to now it's value added.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

There's also no justification for Hachette raising their prices across the board 64% in Australia.

And given you'll actually always be able to get Stephen King for free, no reason at all for anyone to pay for books like that if they don't want to.

Then don't buy them. If Hachette overpriced its books, then its books won't sell and it will go out of business. If that doesn't happen, well Hachette will have been proven to have made the correct business decision .

You can always get something for nothing, if you are willing to break the law. Civilized, law abiding people understand that.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Then don't buy them. If Hachette overpriced its books, then its books won't sell and it will go out of business. If that doesn't happen, well Hachette will have been proven to have made the correct business decision .

You can always get something for nothing, if you are willing to break the law. Civilized, law abiding people understand that.

Maybe. If it works, perhaps they'll do it in all countries.

[Blue Tyson]

Net benefit to the Australian economy if we only ever downloaded stuff free when it was only buyable from foreign retailers and produced by foreigners, too. ;-)

[sabredog]

Hmmmm. Latest M.K. Hume large format book from Dymocks at AU$35.

Got it from an ebay based bookshop brand new for $25 including postage.

Pretty indicative of the markups (rip offs) we face here in Australia.

[stonetools]

Amazon recently reported one million Kindles are sold per week currently. Alone, that is a huge market available to publishers instead of attempting to sell overpriced hardcovers to a changing market and demographic.

The very fact that there is a huge and growing demand for devices dedicated to the reading of ebooks undercuts the argument that agency pricing is depressing the market for ebooks. The fact that the ebook bestseller lists are populated with agency priced ebooks pretty much finishes off the argument altogether.
Agency pricing actually helps indie authors by allowing them to compete on price with established authors. Even so, very few indie authors sell as well as established authors. You may hate to admit this, but the average consumer apparently is quite willing to pay a premium for established authors.

[Blue Tyson]

No it doesn't, because bestseller lists don't have numbers.

The bestseller numbers by sales might actually have gone down.

Sales of books are so crappy in general they are scared to let the public see sales numbers.

Actually, the average consumer has no interest in buying books at all, generally speaking.

[Blue Tyson]

You also miss the possibility that the 'huge and growing demand' may be because people realise they can get tons of stuff for free - just like people buying ipods don't buy 60GB worth of mp3s to fill them with.

And lots of Kindles give you free 3G internet, too, for example.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by sabredog

Hmmmm. Latest M.K. Hume large format book from Dymocks at AU$35.

Got it from an ebay based bookshop brand new for $25 including postage.

Pretty indicative of the markups (rip offs) we face here in Australia.

2/3 is actually a small ripoff, for Australia. ;-)

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by stonetools

The very fact that there is a huge and growing demand for devices dedicated to the reading of ebooks undercuts the argument that agency pricing is depressing the market for ebooks. The fact that the ebook bestseller lists are populated with agency priced ebooks pretty much finishes off the argument altogether.

Does it now? That would be in your mind only though. Just because that might be so (or not) does not make the system any less repulsive.

Originally Posted by stonetools

Agency pricing actually helps indie authors by allowing them to compete on price with established authors. Even so, very few indie authors sell as well as established authors. You may hate to admit this, but the average consumer apparently is quite willing to pay a premium for established authors.

Indie authors use agency pricing to compete? Crap. Most of the indie authors I purchase ebooks from rang from $1.99 to $6.99. Agency price locked authors are higher, closer that $9.99 and upwards.

You will need to prove that last comment. If that was the case there would be NO current EU and US based investigations to the agency pricing rorts. There would not need to be, every ebook purchaser would be happy little reader.

[sabredog]

From Teleread

On GigaOm, Matthew Ingram argues that publishers are still missing the point in the pricing debate. They seem to be talking themselves into believing that consumers are willing to pay higher prices for e-books based on the convenience and other benefits they have to offer.

Meanwhile, Ingram says, self-publishing authors are finding they can sell a lot more e-books at lower prices. If publishers don’t get their act together, he warns, they could find they’ve given Amazon more power in terms of growing its self-publishing market by pushing readers away from their high-priced offerings.

At any rate, the future of agency pricing is up in the air right now as the Justice Department and Europe conduct separate anti-trust investigations into it, and a couple of dozen anti-trust class action suits are pending in court.

http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/e-boo...ing-the-point/