

Anger at Kindle pricing victimizes ratings of new Turow bestseller - FluidDjango
http://www.amazon.com/Innocent-Scott-Turow/product-reviews/0446562424/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_1?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar

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russell
Charlie Stross has done a series of interesting posts "Common Misconceptions
About Publishing" at [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/04/common-m...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html)

The take-away is that ink to dead trees is a small part of the cost of
publishing a book. Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents. It appears to
me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the publishers set
the Kindle price.

~~~
dpapathanasiou
_Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents._

According to "The Insider's Guide to Getting Published"
([http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-
Manus...](http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-
Manuscript/dp/0385479360)), a book that sells for $20 costs $2 to produce.

That book is a little dated (1996), but I'd be surprised if the cost structure
has changed that much.

The book goes on to explain why it's difficult to make money in traditional
publishing, even with those margins.

 _It appears to me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the
publishers set the Kindle price._

Not sure about the former, but the latter is definitely true:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html)

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pneill
Oh, this is nothing. You want to be outraged, take a look at the "Intelligent
Investor" on Amazon. The kindle edition is 5 DOLLARS more than the printed
version. What the what!!!!

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blehn
I've been seeing this a lot recently, and I find it really annoying. The
reviews are not the place to voice your pricing concerns; they should be used
to review product quality. This sort of abuse completely undermines the
usefulness of the system.

~~~
hexis
I have to completely disagree. Amazon.com is a store, not wikipedia, and price
is a hugely important factor. If folks are unhappy with the pricing on
amazon.com, then amazon.com is exactly the right place for it. In particular,
if folks are unhappy with the pricing of a particular item, then the review
section for that item is precisely the right place to complain. They are
reviewing a product that is being offered for sale. Price is crucial and
relevant.

~~~
blehn
Price is relevant in terms of the product value. If you buy a $1000 set of
tupperware from Amazon, and they melt in the dishwasher, by all means, give
the product a low rating because the item's performance does not justify it's
price.

These book reviews are different, though. People are giving 1 star reviews
without having read the book, because they don't agree with the price. They
are giving 1 star reviews for books that are not available on Kindle. They are
not qualified to review the item because they have not used it. Whether or not
the complaints are valid, the review section is the wrong venue for voicing
them.

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CapitalistCartr
Price is not a multiple of cost: it is set by the market. Kindle is a closed
platform owned by Amazon, and they can charge all the market will bear. That's
the downside of closed platforms.

~~~
thwarted
Charging what the market will bear is the duty of sellers in a free market.
This has nothing to do with a platform being closed or not. Open platforms
don't exist outside the market, they compete in same economy that the closed
platforms are in.

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KC8ZKF
A lot of the anger seems to come from the fact that an ebook is cheaper to
produce and distribute. As if the value of a book is in the wood pulp and
ink...

~~~
DannoHung
I remain unconvinced that anyone but the copy editor and the author are
superfluous in the creation of a great work of art.

I will concede that there needs to be someone to run a storefront to sell the
art, but his costs should be very, very small when the art is non-corporeal.

~~~
joubert
I agree with you 100%.

That's why I co-founded Fifobooks, which is a new DRM-free ebook marketplace,
where _authors_ :

\- retain all the rights to their work

\- maintain full editorial control

\- set the price at which their ebooks are sold (and keep majority of the
revenue)

\- there is no fee to publish

<http://fifobooks.com>

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InclinedPlane
Media pricing is currently pathological. Even for printed books the cost of
production is relatively minor compared to the total price, and the artists
tend to take away a relatively small portion of total revenue.

If a book costs 10x as much to produce or has 1/100th the sales as another
book that has almost no effect on the overall pricing.

Unfortunately, consumers now expect books (and CDs and movies) to have flat,
wholesale-style pricing. As if they were a commodity. Worse yet we have this
bizarre hard back / paper back staged release process for books used to
extract profit for in demand books. A model which doesn't work at all for
ebooks.

I don't know what the answer is and I suspect that consumers may be too
inflexible, at least in the near term, to allow for much price variability on
ebooks. If that's the case then we may end up in a very bad situation for
authors and new literature in general for a very long time.

~~~
bobbyi
The hardback/ paperback model is that early adopters are charged more and then
the price is brought down later for people who are willing to wait. I don't
see why that couldn't work for ebooks if people were willing to accept it.

~~~
kgermino
Yes, that's why the publishers do it but they get away with it because many
people see a hardback book as being more valuable than a paperback one despite
the fact that they both cost about the same to make.

Sure the only people who regularly but hardbacks are early adopters but they
don't see themselves as paying extra because they are early adopters they see
themselves as paying extra because their buying a better quality hardback
book. This is different from a tech early adopter who knows that they are
paying extra for the same thing in order to have it first.

Yes it could work if people accepted it but I don't see people accepting it
without there being something extra (maybe a forward from the author where the
story only version of the book isn't released for a few weeks) that they can
justify paying extra for.

