

Ask HN: Why many kindle books are more expensive than hardcover ones? - wslh


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apress
Thanks to Apple, four of the five major publishing houses imposed so-called
agency pricing on their ebook titles (the give away on Amazon is the phrase
this price was set by the publisher). Under agency pricing, the publisher sets
the final price to consumers and Amazon cannot discount it at all. Amazon
receives 30% of the price on each sale, 70% goes to the publishers, who are
setting ebook prices higher than Amazon used to. But print books (and ebooks
from random House) are still sold under the old wholesale model. Amazon pays
about half the cover price and can set the retail price at whatever it likes,
generally at a big discount. Note that in BOTH cases, the publisher has total
control over the amount of money it collects on each sale. But under agency
pricing, publishers also control the final price to consumers while under
wholesale pricing, the retailer gets to set that price.

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Travis
How is that a legal business practice? I thought price-controls set by an
oligarchy was a clear violation of anti-trust laws...

------
arn
Why does milk at a gas station cost more than at a grocery store?

Because prices for goods are set based on what the market will bear, not on
some formula or notion of fairness.

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nudge
Because it means more profit, and because the market will bear it.

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rprasad
Amazon does not set the price; the publishers do.

Many publishers set the price of the ebook higher to prevent cannibalization
of dead tree book sales. Also, ebook prices drop more slowly over time than do
their real world counterparts, so higher initial prices allows them to make
more revenue from the title.

Finally, the higher prices are intended to cover the cost of digital piracy.
The prices are estimates intended to maintain revenue lost from piracy of
ebooks.

apress above (below?) has a response detailing the legal structure of the
Amazon-publisher relationship.

