Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing 236
AusPublishingWorker writes "With the iPad arriving on the scene, it seems that Amazon is feeling the pressure on eBook pricing from publishers. ITNews reports that Amazon has agreed to deals with both Harper Collins and Simon and Schuster which would allow the companies to select their own prices rather than the default US$9.99 price tag. Given the recent deal with Macmillan, it seems likely that we'll be seeing eBook prices moving up towards $14.99 in the near future."
Re:$14.99 seems way too high for an eBook. (Score:4, Insightful)
Therefore I have the right to take it for free.
At your local library -- if you bring it back in 2 weeks. Otherwise,no, it doesn't. You not liking their pricing structure does not give you the right to violate their copyright. (Unless you are Google, that is.)
Re:$14.99 seems way too high for an eBook. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. When CD prices went from 10-12 bucks to 18-20 bucks suddenly during the mid 90's I stopped buying CDs and I never have bought one since. I go to 20-30 shows a year though and usually buy tour shirts at the show.
I own a Sony PRS-600, a 1st gen Kindle and an Edge [entourageedge.com] and I have never bought a single e-book because they are worth to me about 3-5 bucks a piece, not 10 bucks. Maybe if you read a book a month that is worth it but I read 2-3 books a week and I'm not about to spend 100+ a month on books when for my entire life buying new and used paper books I have never even come close to that. Can't even sell the damn things. Powell's a book store in PDX where I live I used to be able to recoup 50-60% of the price I paid for the books by trading for store credit, with Amazon, Apple and Sony you get a 10 dollar book sitting in your Library that you will likely never read again.
No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
I can resell it when I've read it, I can take it wherever I want and I don't have to worry about someone pressing a button and removing it from my read.
Best of all, I don't have to spring for the price of a reader before I can even start reading a book
Re:The Real Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with pricing books at $9.99 is the stickiness of the price tag. What is meant by this is consumer' perception of value. Although you can achieve large sales volume at price "below $10", if you ever try to raise the price by even a tiny amount, say $1, consumers *feel* like the markup was much higher than it really is, and sales subsequently drop off heavily.
You sound like a marketing major. They seem to be the only ones who believe that garbage. I don't know anyone who is fooled by pricing at 9.99 and being told "under $10". Just call it $10.
I could have sworn (Score:1, Insightful)
Weren't we promised that competition drives down prices? People are actually enthusiastic about buying an iPad so they can pay MORE for the electronic copy than the paperback editions cost? no thanks.. not unless it comes with ifriends and ilatte
Re:$14.99 seems way too high for an eBook. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Real Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen it consistently at my mother-in-law's consignment shop and she confirms the behavior over the entire lifetime of the business (which has been in business for 14 years). Price it at $X.99 instead of $X+1 and you'll see almost twice as many sales. Similarly--though much more confusingly--people tend to buy stuff marked "Buy One, Get One 50% off," instead of "Buy One, Get One Free!"
I really don't get that one...
I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh look... (Score:4, Insightful)
14.99! Yay! I'll buy the PAPERBACK!
There is no reason why an ebook needs to cost more than a paperback, let alone 15 bucks. At least it can't be removed remotely from my reader. I suspect that brick & mortar book stores don't need to worry about their futures the way things are going.
--
BMO
Re:Oh how convenient... (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you forget that the reason Amazon was being pushed into this position was because of the deal the publishers made with Apple for the iPad, and thus MFN status would affect the discounts and other pricing given to Amazon?
These topics are not unrelated.
All Thanks to Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
I can't believe no one even mentioned this: /. all praised the iPad and Apple's scheme to make the publishers more money. Well here are the results of your joyous praise!
Now instead of Amazon keeping e-books at $9.99 and the industry in check--we now have a locked down, DRM-laden, inferior versions to the paperback, for...
$14.99! And that's only the beginning of the price increase!
Thanks Apple fanboys!
Amazon was trying to protect them (Score:5, Insightful)
They were only trying to protect publishers from themselves. Amazon knows a lot more about what customers will pay for ebooks than publishers do, and their tactics which appeared heavy handed existed because it was the point where the maximum amount of profit could be obtained. Yes the $9.99 price point would hurt the sale of physical books, but you sell so many ebooks at that price that makes up for it tremendously.
The only concern publishers had was that in public you couldn't tell what books other people were reading if they all had Kindles. They felt they lost some free advertising when going to ebooks. What they failed to realize is with an ebook reader attached to a network you can tie it into twitter or facebook which is a far more powerful advertising vehicle than some random stranger in public.
It's really pitiful that publishers are incapable of adapting to the realities of the 21st century. Amazon tried to drag them there kicking and screaming, but have failed.
(ex Amazon employee, so my views may be biased)
Re:$14.99 seems way too high for an eBook. (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't take it or nobody will be able to buy it. Leave a copy at least.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
What give you the right to ignore the laws of the country you live in? You don't like a law? Work to change it. Work to change the laws concerning DRM and extending copyright.
I'm conservative and I agree with you that DRM, and copyright, due to the never ending extensions that Congress keeps tacking on to it, laws are broken. But, that doesn't give either of us the "right" to break other laws. There's lots of laws I think are unjust and counterproductive but ignoring them is not the way to go. You only harm your own society when you champion lawlessness.
There are several instances where single individuals have proven that one person can be the prime motivator in getting a law changed. Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of those people. Her book was a prime mover in ending slavery as it had a great impact on people's consciences. She worked within the system to change something she knew to be wrong. You dislike the copyright and DRM laws? Work to change them. Keep at it until something changes, and you'll have made a very positive contribution to everyone's life. You'll be a hero to a lot of people.
Keep on promoting illegal activity and all you will accomplish is the creation of even harsher laws. Dishonesty harms your cause in the eyes of the public at large and the government, and makes your belief look to be a "professed belief" based only on self-interest and the willingness to steal.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Insightful)
What give you the right to ignore the laws of the country you live in? You don't like a law? Work to change it. Work to change the laws concerning DRM and extending copyright.
Disobeying laws is a way of working to change them. Just ask that skinny Indian dude... Ben Kingsley.
Re:Before the anti-ebook posts accumulate, (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt any OCR scanned books you find on torrent sites have proper formatting for your reader.
Weird, I've... *cough*... heard... that the ebooks you download from an average torrent site are OCR'd to plain text, and so are readable on basically anything that will support that format (which is, AFAIK, essentially any reader on the market today).
Granted, you will suffer from more typos and errors, and definitely imperfect page layout. But they work just fine.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
If you consider works that were made 70 years ago new, that's a problem.
If the purpose is to protect the artist, why are artworks from dead artists still under copyright? Who are we protecting? Are those artists, dead for 20, 40, 60 years going to produce new works?
That legal document was produced to protect artist from producers. Now, it's helping the producers subdue others. See the title? "Amazon Caves To Publishers On eBook Pricing". That was not their intentions when they wrote it.
Re:More reasonable pricing (Score:4, Insightful)
How does the existence, or non-existence, of middlemen affect my perceived value?
I see a hardcover at $20 - $30. I get a physical copy that can be used anywhere without special technology. I get the right to resell it when I am done with it. A hard drive crash will not delete it. To me, that has value.
A $14.99 digital copy that has none of these advantages seems to me to have little value. That perception does not depend on middlemen, or the cost of paper. It depends on the usefulness of the product. Whether or not the publisher and author save costs by publishing electronically is not my problem.
Re:$14.99 seems way too high for an eBook. (Score:2, Insightful)
Uhh, maybe he 'previews' them via bittorrent/IRC/etc... for free