Comments on: What the DOJ settlement means for ebook prices now

By: Roger

Roger — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 21:39:36 +0000

The reason the publishers don’t want the discounts is they’re afraid Amazon will operate at a loss and drive the competition out. That would give Amazon the clout to demand lower prices from the publishers. Basically, the publishers are losing their grip on the industry and they’re trying to squeeze as much out before they eventually go away.

By: MTNorman

MTNorman — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 22:08:56 +0000

If the prices drop, then these publishers may actually get my business again. They lost sales with me because I refuse to pay more for an ebook than the hard copy. Today many ebooks on Amazon are 12.99 when there is a paperback available for 6.99 or 7.99. I would have paid the 9.99 price Amazon originally set on the Kindle edition when the hard cover was selling for 16.99, but when the publishers began setting the prices, I stopped buying those books except on very rare occasions. Guess what – there were enough books available at the Amazon standard prices from other publishers that I have had plenty to read – even “discovered” some authors I probably would not have been looking at if other books had been available at Kindle standard prices.

By: Andrew Malkin

Andrew Malkin — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:25:31 +0000

It doesn’t mean Amazon can’t muscle the publishers for more discount on eBooks as publishers raise list prices. This way, Amazon can still sell for $9.99. Also, Bezos didn’t necessarily specify eBooks among their content arsenal did he? I think they will certainly make profit but long-term thinking is in their DNA too.

By: DrawingGuy

DrawingGuy — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:56:41 +0000

I, for one, am glad. I found the price fix to be completely anti-competitive – there was no shopping around for ebooks because everywhere cost the same. Membership discounts were not allowed to apply, ebooks costing more than the paperbacks, etc.

I never quite understood why publishers would NOT want retailers to discount their books. Sure it would hurt direct site sales, but it doesn’t affect their whole sale prices… they get the x amount of dollars per book whether they sell it at $7 or $10. I would think the increased sales would help them.

I do find it sad that this came too late and book retailers died because they were not allowed to compete in prices and they didn’t have special hardware (like B&N) to garner ebook purchase loyalty. Gone are my memberships to companies like Borders that gave a monthly discount or buy so many books to get one free. With less competition out there, such memberships and deals are not as necessary, but I hope to see them in ebooks now.

By: Eric Welch

Eric Welch — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 18:34:24 +0000

“Publishers Lunch’s Cader raises the seemingly counterintuitive point that settling publishers may actually raise their ebooks’ list prices. Nothing in the settlement prevents them from doing so, and “higher list prices could ‘use up’ a retailer’s annual discount pool more quickly and provide some protection against devaluation in the marketplace of a publisher’s biggest properties.”

Which is what the legacy publishers have wanted all along anyway. Nothing stopped them from having higher prices before agency. They just seem to react ad hoc to everything rather than have a coherent strategy. The only result will be driving more readers and authors to publish independently, which I suspect they really don’t want.

By: thedigitalreader

thedigitalreader — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:57:11 +0000

Given that Jeff Bezos explicitly said last week that content was where Amazon would make its profit, it doesn’t seem likely that they would discount ebooks too heavily. All that panic and had-wringing on the part f publishers seems to be for nought.

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/09/07/did-the-agency-model-lead-to-cheap-ereaders/