The Price of Amazon 298
An anonymous reader writes "As physical book stores continue to struggle and disappear, the NY Times puts the changing book industry into perspective as a cost of the existence of Amazon. Further, it's a cost that hasn't been fully paid, as other effects of Amazon's ascendancy have yet to be felt. Quoting: 'One consequence of this shift is that soon no one will know what a book's "real" price is. Price will be determined by demand and perhaps by whim. The first seeds of this can be seen in the Justice Department's suit against the leading publishers, who felt that Amazon was pricing their e-books so low that it threatened their viability. The government accused the publishers of colluding to raise prices in an anti-consumer move. Amazon was not a party to the case, but it emerged the big winner.' Economists, publishers, and readers no longer have confidence that a book will cost the same amount this week as it did the last."
And? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just Amazon? Just books?
one word ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... Selection.
Amazon beats any bookstore at finding older books.
Brick and mortar stores are all about displaying 20 copies of the latest shit best-seller, sitting side by side, on the front shelves. No thanks.
Let us all shed a tear... (Score:5, Insightful)
New technology makes old technology obsolete. (Score:2, Insightful)
What use is a physical book store when I do not want to buy physical books?
And it's not just physical books and bookstores. I have no local computer shop that carries even 0.01% of the inventory that Amazon and Newegg possess, and the stuff they do have is just purchased from Amazon or Newegg and marked up 30%.
Amazon is just better than shopping locally. Better in terms of selection, price, and availability. Best of all I don't even have to leave my house. Books are delivered instantly to my Kindle and there's a 2 to 5 days wait for physical-goods.
Re:one word ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:one word ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you have a kindle, in which case you have same day delivery. And with prime you can borrow a lot of books for free.
Does this mean anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
'One consequence of this shift is that soon no one will know what a book's "real" price is. Price will be determined by demand and perhaps by whim.
How is that a consequence? Haven't books always been priced based on demand and whim? They don't think the price of a $200 textbook is primarily in the print materials, do they?
Amazon set the price, customers judges the value. (Score:5, Insightful)
more of this "fairness" nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Price is supposed to be set by demand. And if it is set wrong on a whim, people don't buy it.
If by "fairly" you mean that bloated, overpriced, arrogant publishing houses with excessive internal costs can't force their customers to pay inflated prices anymore, then yes, they can't price "fairly" anymore.
As far as I'm concerned, the revolution in the book market isn't done until every single big 20th century publisher is out of businesses, and most authors sell and market their books themselves through convenient and inexpensive online services.
Re:Breaking news (Score:5, Insightful)
eBook prices are mediated by the supply of good writers, which is not infinite. Same goes for everything digital. Replication costs going to 0 isn't sufficient to remove supply to 0 as long as the cost of the initial thing you're replicating is nonzero.
There's an interesting question about how to economically model that, of course. DRM is one way, extremely unpopular on Slashdot, but certain forms have had market successes (Steam, eBooks). There are others, many of which are more radical departures from the current model -- one is to assume that enough people will have the desire to do art for its own sake to supply worldwide demand and thus rely on "donated" art (free supply) and then infinitesimal replicated costs. Another is product placement, which isn't nearly as common in books as in TV and movies but could be done. Closely related is using the books as a platform to sell things that aren't reproducible, like kid's toys (Transformers and He-Man in book form). There's individual / corporate patronage. There's a model where the government (or a charitable foundation or something) sponsors a fixed amount per year, and distributes books for free and unencumbered by anything save a counter that tracks the number of downloads (or perhaps aggregate time spent reading the book or similar), distributing their money according to these stats. They could be written in less-common languages by companies that control professional high-quality translations, and kickstart a translation effort into English, Spanish, and Chinese. Lots of others.
But there must be some model, whether it's explicit or implicit. Because the supply is restricted.
Re:Let us all shed a tear... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot spewing nytimes paid pablum? Will pro-government shills be next?
Wait a minute (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. Based on the "struggle" and "disappear" links in the summary, I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for Barnes & Noble as well as Borders. Is that correct?
It wasn't all that long ago people lamented how these mega-stores - specifically Barnes & Noble and Borders - were killing all the little independent book shops. Their response was they delivered what the consumer wanted at lower prices. Well, it looks like the shoe is on the other foot now! I actually felt bad about the independent book sellers (a few of whom have managed to adapt and do good business)... but not these guys. If they can't compete in the modern marketplace, that's their problem.
Re:When the shift hits the fan. (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, when Baen Books started selling e-books through Amazon, they had to -raise- the $6.99 prices of books sold through their own store - because Amazon would price-match their store, otherwise.
As a result of this, Baen increased author royalties on e-books by 25%, so more of the customer's money is going to the author.
So I'm guessing Amazon's $9.99 default price isn't hurting fiction authors much unless their publisher's an asshole.
(Though really, buying them through Amazon instead of direct from Baen is silly - Baen gives you your books in Kindle's .mobi, Nook/everyone else's epub, EBookwise, Microsoft .LIT, Sony Digital Reader, HTML, and as a .rtf file.)
You're right that the publisher and author should set the price of the ebook - they should set the WHOLESALE price, that Amazon - or whoever else - pays them for the book.
If Amazon wants to sell books below cost as a loss leader for Kindle sales, that's up to Amazon. The publisher should take their stated wholesale price and be happy with it.
That's actually how it USED to work before the 'agency pricing model' came in.
You know what else happened when the 'agency pricing model' came in?
Most of the indie e-bookstores closed.
Great job letting the publishers set prices, there. With publisher-set pricing, there was nothing else for the smaller stores left to compete with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple over.
The one I used had a 'book club' program, that offered discounts with multiple purchases. Suddenly, they couldn't do that any more.
And they only avoided going under entirely by getting bought out by B&N.
So, in short: Fuck the 'agency pricing' model. And fuck the publishers using it.
Set a wholesale price for the thing, sell it wholesale, put a 'suggested retail' price on it, and let the retail channel decide what to actually sell it for.
You know, like almost every other product on the market.
How selfish do you want to be? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point of the article is about: Do people want the changes that are happening to the main street to continue?
From a purely consumer standpoint, sure, cheaper is better. And as long as there's no development of monopolies or other devious practices, that's fine for consumers.
But. Stores closing down in your town leads to decrepit town centres; decaying cities aren't nice and have other, unpleasant consequences. Massive corporate tax avoidance (partly why Amazon has such great prices in the UK?) actually is a bad thing too -- for infrastructure, and for your own personal tax bill. So yes, these changes have a cost -- to society. But, damn, that USB memory/ LED monitor/ Android tablet is cheaper there. Yay!
Re: NEWS FLASH (Score:4, Insightful)
you know what IS the same as it was 50 years ago? a dystopian vision of the future - brought to you by Amazon:
http://m.fastcodesign.com/1672939/think-your-office-is-soulless-check-out-this-amazon-fulfillment-center?utm_source=buffer&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=buffer41153&utm_medium=twitter#9
umm I don't understand the need to compare an office to a fucking highly automated and organized warehouse about being soulless.
you seen offices from 50 years back? yeah, they got soul, not(could smoke inside tho..). any modern papermill is as soulless as the fullfillment center too.
but book prices have ALWAYS BEEN ON A WHIM, the print costs for the book have nothing to do with it. the research cost for the book has nothing to do with it. it's just a guess at what price the people might buy it at.
Re:NEWS FLASH (Score:5, Insightful)
Leave it to the NY Times to pen something so illiterate: "no one will know what a book's "real" price is. Price will be determined by demand and perhaps by whim."
The "real price" of something is exactly determined by each transaction where it is sold. This is the realest price you can get. A MSRP printed on the book is not "real".
Defending tuf (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no "real" price. Prices are determined by what sellers can get for a product, and what people will pay.
This isn't even about "real" prices. The big publishing houses have for years inflated prices because they could. Now an upstart comes along and starts to eat into their profits, and the old school publishers aren't happy about it. Of course not!
The book publishing industry is now following the same path that the music industry started following when iTunes disrupted their little racket back in 2001. The book industry has been ripe for change for years. It's nice to see it finally happening. Now if we could just see the same thing start happening to textbooks!
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)