Of course there is the human factor, he/she is known as the author who created the content. The original content was initially edited and produced for the printed on paper editions. However, those paper editions aren’t selling through the projected numbers—the hype to thrust printed book into a shrinking marketplace isn’t working. One senior executive with a mainstream house foolishly tried to justify higher ebook prices as their way of recovering declining profits from dwindling printed book sales.

Yes, there’s overhead along with frightfully high operating expensives required to maintain these corporate publishing giants. They’re trying to sustain an outdated business model with the zap of overpriced ebook dollars. Ebooks have created an entirely new dynamics in the publishing industry. It is regrettable greedy corporate publishers are attempting to impose an unrealistic pricing structure.

As for the human factor, I believe authors of ebooks with mainstream houses will suffer because they won’t be paid anywhere near the 70% in royalties they would receive from Amazon and 65% from B&N. On ebooks priced above the consumer-friendly threshold of $9.99 the royalties are only 35% and 40%–and that’s higher than royalties typically paid by traditional publishers. I don’t know what kind of corporate bean-counter did the math, but this is surely a case where less is more.

Another human factor is the consumer. There’s an ongoing boycott by ebook buyers not to purchase ebooks priced above the threshold. The exception to this imposed consumer requirement would be nonfiction titles with proprietary information the reader is specifically interest in.

I’ve been writing professionally and involve in some aspect of the publishing industry for more than half a century. In recent years I’ve authored and published nineteen ebooks, including the popular series, “Ebooks about Ebooks.” Late in 2011 I retired from a mid-size digital publishing company as Vice President for Author Services.

Ebooks are the dynamic future of publishing—a fresh start, a new look, an unpolluted platform for creative expressions. This evolving publishing branch needs to be free of the self-serving ways, controlling influences, ill-fated dealings of corporate style publishing. It was the combined efforts of mainstream publishers, distributors/wholesalers, bookstore chains, and major reviewers who suppressed the early growth of POD publishers. This cannot be allowed to happen with ebook publishing.

Enjoy often… John

provides the facts on ebook prices for perhaps the first time. A true decrees under the Agency model!

You can add all the rhetoric you like (from either side) but at the end of the day the stats actually speak for them selves. The DOJ had that info even though the public did not.

This demonstrates that the DOJ is on the wrong side in the battle!

I had to get the book as a reference else I would’ve used Amazon or Bookdepository.

PS: The book in question is the latest edition of the Web Application Hacker’s Handbook (which is a very popular series among web app pen testers).

Proving that Apple did anything wrong in offering book publishers the same sales deal they have with Application, music, TV, and Movie distributers sounds near impossible. But I guess we will see.

Why do you think a company who wants to make money would intentionally loose money? Why do you think Borders is dead? and B&N is closing stores all over the place?

Do you think the bits were taking up too much warehouse space and they needed to fire sale them to make room? Why do you think Amazon would take a loss on each book?