

Amazon’s E-Book Pricing A Constant Thorn For Publishers - iProject
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/business/media/amazons-e-book-pricing-a-constant-thorn-for-publishers.html?ref=technology

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kemayo
"The publishers wanted to stop Amazon from using what one of them called “the
wretched $9.99 price point,” according to court papers."

I can't say that I care about the specific price point... but when I see an
ebook costing more than a physical copy which has to be printed and shipped to
me, I feel a certain amount of annoyance knowing that it's the publishers
who're causing that. Even costing the same is pushing it.

Am I being reasonable in holding this position? Maybe not, economically. But I
doubt it's an uncommon one.

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nextparadigms
Yeah, this is why I'm siding with Amazon for now. Publishers need to be hurt
_first_ , and then we see what we can do about Amazon's monopoly. At least
right now I think Amazon is the lesser evil.

The publishers may be more than one, but they are acting like a monopoly
anyway (or oligopoly if you will) by trying to price ebooks a lot higher than
they should cost. I don't care if they do it through the agency model, the
wholesale model or the whatever model. The point is they are doing it, and at
least Amazon was trying to bring the price down with the $9.99 price tag, and
with the $1-$3 Singles, even if that's forcing the publishers' hand.

For anyone out there still thinking the publishers weren't colluding - just
think of it this way - no big publisher would've tried to price the ebooks $15
if the others didn't agree to do it as well. Also Apple wouldn't have agreed
to have $15 prices for its books, unless the publishers forced Amazon to have
the same prices, too.

If the publishers are so worried about Amazon, maybe they should stop giving
them so much power themselves as a gatekeeper by asking them to use DRM.
Amazon has a huge lock-in because of that, and it's only getting stronger. If
they know what's good for themselves, they will make e-books DRM-free
yesterday (and obviously that doesn't mean giving Apple a pass on DRM either).

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Lewisham
What's totally bizarre about the publishers pricing is that other goods that
have gone digital have _benefitted_ by lower prices, or at least, temporary
price drops. My knowledge is particularly in video games, but those Steam
sales that keep popping up are not through the goodness of Valve's hearts.
Publishers are doing _gangbusters_ on those sales, and consumers are buying
far more games than they'll ever play.

They screwed up. The agency model wasn't necessarily bad, it's that they used
it to screw the consumer to pay higher prices. Had they used it to lower
prices, they wouldn't have this problem now, where they forced themselves into
wholesale and let Amazon marginalize them further.

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jorgem
Oh, I don't know. I remember CD's being more expensive than records. And DVD's
were more expensive than VHS tapes.

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joverholt
Those all involved physical supply and distribution chains, each with their
own added costs. They also represented an advancement in technology. Yes,
there are costs with digital distribution, but I find it hard to believe they
are greater than distributing a physical product. My dad gave me a Kindle he
got for free. I have a hard time paying $10 or $15 to buy a book I don't
really own, among other reasons.

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modfodder
Amazon is no different than Wal-Mart. Growing up in a small town, I remember
Wal-Mart coming in and decimating numerous small businesses in it's wake. But
of course we shopped there, the prices were cheaper, even if it did close our
neighbors business.

It wasn't until years later when my uncle's business landed the desirable Wal-
Mart account that I understood how they were doing it. It was his best day and
worst day of his life (in hindsight), as Wal-Mart nearly shut down his
business with it's demands (and once a business lands WM as a customer, they
become the dominant customer by their design), so once you as a business owner
realize what you've allowed them to do to your business, it's too late.

And so many people I know despise Wal-Mart and it's practices, but worship at
the altar of Bezos because it's "online".

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Lewisham
You're discounting the big difference here: online makes moving fast easy. Big
box stores win because they are unassailable, Amazon surely is not. If enough
authors don't like Amazon's policies, BAM, up pops a new site as a collective
of authors selling their e-books direct to the consumer and not through
Amazon. Amazon loses. If Amazon starts being a terrible company to its
customers, BAM, up pops a new site which is nice to them. Amazon loses.

Amazon is not winning because it's buying out the pot, it's winning because
it's providing a better service. Publishers lose out because they're the
middle-men. They know this. They're too cowardly to directly deal with the
customer. If they wanted to, they could have bought out Barnes & Noble and
really slugged it out with Amazon, but they won't. They'll let B&N fight the
battle for them, and if B&N go bankrupt, well, that's B&N's problem.

It's just plain wrong to equate online with offline. Online is a far more
competitive and risky market to be in.

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brisance
I respectfully disagree. There is also lock-in from Amazon because most people
will have no clue how to remove the DRM on the Kindle titles and move them to
another e-reader should they decide to do so. So the parent comment is valid.

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Tsagadai
Lock-in here only prevents sales on the content side. Yes, you can't shift
your whole collection between hardware vendors yet but you also can't buy from
several content vendors yet. If someone announced DRM free books they could
sell to all of their competitors' devices. Opening up content sales is more
important than opening up hardware from a consumer point of view. You can buy
a ebook reader from hundreds of vendors but you can only buy books for it from
a couple (including the one that sold you the reader).

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WalterBright
There is no technical reason preventing you from creating your own ebooks &
distributing them and having them work on the kindle.

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kondro
I think what publishers miss is that people (if they are anything like me) are
buying and reading more books because e-readers are much more convenient. So,
whilst Amazon may be pushing down the mean price of books (books that have no
production cost or risk of returns/unsold quantities), I think people are
buying/reading more.

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dwc
I've always been a reader. Since I (finally) got a Kindle for xmas I've
ordered more books and spent more money than normal. Not so much because it's
a new toy (that wore off fast enough), but because it really _is_ convenient.

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dlgeek
“Amazon wants the price of books to be very, very low — lower than the
publishing community can support,” said Curt Matthews, IPG’s chief executive.
“Making a book is still a craft industry. Books need to be edited, to be
publicized. Someone needs to say this is good and this is not.”

Publishing industry: You should pay us 80% of a book's price to decide what's
good.

Amazon: We'll let the customer do that and give the extra money to the author,
thanks.

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dublinben
There are plenty of freelance editors and typesetters who will fix a book for
a fraction of the 70% royalty Amazon gives authors. No matter their
popularity, it can only be good for an author to move to self-publishing now.

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junto
Authors, musicians and film makers need to realise that they no longer need a
middle man. Remind me again how much of that $9.99 the authors were actually
getting? The old world media is slowly dying. It needs some euthanasia to
speed up the process. They need to stop telling us what, how and when we can
and can't consume. They need to learn that lesson and fast because Generation
Y is almost lost to them.

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docgnome
I see the argument that $9.99 is a bad price point for publishers but is there
any real evidence that this price is too low to sustain profits for a
publisher? I mean... 10 bucks doesn't seem very low to me. It seems...
reasonable for a book. Especially given that there is no cost for storage or
printing of ebooks.

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artsrc
If the 7,000 people do valuable marketing, then pay them for it directly.

Why all this big fuss about "Cutting Off Amazon"?

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iRobot
Ouch..

Throw enough shit and some of it may stick..

Someone's really got it in for Amazon, this is the third post in two days.

