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Amazon Reluctantly Agrees to Higher eBook Pricing

Is piracy a punishment for greed?

tk421 said:
Why is piracy acceptable if the price is too high? If you don't like the price, don't buy it and don't steal it either.
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So...eBooks are selling fine for several years at one price, and then, for no apparent reason at all, the price increases 50% without any explanation.

Perhaps a little civil disobedience as punishment for unrestrained greed is a good thing?

And can we please stop calling it stealing? If my friend won't spend $700 for Photoshop, but then downloads a pirated copy, how exactly is Adobe harmed? They weren't going to make the sale in any case at that price. Yes, I realize my friend is unfairly enriched by getting to use Photoshop for free, but there's an easy way to curb piracy: make the product affordable. You reduce piracy, and you make up the lost revenue in greater volume.

That's what Apple did. By forcing music tracks to $0.99, Apple made them so inexpensive that many pirates didn't even bother to steal them any longer.

People and corporations have a right to protect their intellectual property, but there may be consequences to appalling greed.
 
jerome65 said:
A lot of the digital production, ie laying out the pages, has been moving to India over the past 10 years due to price pressures from the publishers. Per page price during that time that the venders get from the publishers is about 1/3rd what it was about 10 years ago, at least for textbook publishing. What we need is a way to bring those jobs back to our shores. A higher profit margin for the publishers is not going to do that by itself, but it does make it more possible especially if it is coupled with a bit of consumer outrage over outsourcing the work to another country.

I guess my main point is that the constant downward price pressure on products that we make here has hurt our economy. It has pushed jobs overseas to be able to meet the demands of retailers like Wallmart and Amazon. In a lot of cases those jobs have not been replaced, just look at the unemployment numbers and the trade deficit and you should be able to realize that it has affected our economy, and is likely to slow the recovery since as the economy picks up there will be fewer jobs created here to meet the demand and more overseas.
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There's an easy fix for this: tariffs. Just increase the price on a given offshore good or service by an amount equal to what it would have cost to produce in the United States. Presto, jobs stay here, problem solved.

Of course, prices go up, but that's the breaks if you want to buy American. We can't lower our standard of living to India's or Bangladesh's.
 
Peace said:
McMillan,like other publishers adopted the price structure of Amazon because at that time Amazon was the major seller of eBooks. Now Apple has told publishers they will sell books for what the publishers want to sell them at and take a 30% cut.

This scared Amazon so they got ticked off at McMillan and pulled their titles.

McMillan called their bluff.

Amazon caved.

end of story.
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I wouldnt be surprised if other publishers started doing the same. Apple enters, we all lose.
 
Apple "Make my book" SDK?

Where is the Apple "Make my book" SDK download? Books are very granular and localized media formats. Most titles are not made by the big boys. It's time to democratize digitizing them and bring old books up to the standards and features of a modern eBook format.

Steve? Tell yourself (and the download website) Rocketman sent ya. Use my avatar. :)

Rocketman
 
macsimcon said:
So...eBooks are selling fine for several years at one price, and then, for no apparent reason at all, the price increases 50% without any explanation.

Perhaps a little civil disobedience as punishment for unrestrained greed is a good thing?

And can we please stop calling it stealing? If my friend won't spend $700 for Photoshop, but then downloads a pirated copy, how exactly is Adobe harmed? They weren't going to make the sale in any case at that price. Yes, I realize my friend is unfairly enriched by getting to use Photoshop for free, but there's an easy way to curb piracy: make the product affordable. You reduce piracy, and you make up the lost revenue in greater volume.

That's what Apple did. By forcing music tracks to $0.99, Apple made them so inexpensive that many pirates didn't even bother to steal them any longer.

People and corporations have a right to protect their intellectual property, but there may be consequences to appalling greed.
Click to expand...

The interesting point is the effect over the business model and approach to product management.

To produce the product costs X, so X < V*P (volume*price). However the concept of a "premium" product is based around a high price and lower volume of sales. It's a differentiation mechanism - works for Apple.
The fun comes when you've discounted the price so much that the margins fall (cutting into the cost) and you find yourself in a situation where you cannot continue to develop the product (regardless of the number of sales). All powered by a vain idea that you can crush the opposition by undercutting their price so they fail.. everyone hurts when a price war occurs.

The technique of dropping prices and starting a price war is how Wall mart and others conquer large areas at the expense of the folks making a living.
So in the end you end up with crap being sold because the returns cannot justify the development costs. Then you'll be left with a low price offering and a few high price that actually work.
Next the price sensitive people see the crap that exists and eye up the proper product funded by a proper business model. They don't want to pay for it so they pirate it..

The first rule of pricing - if you've got to the point of discounting to get sales or you're about to get involved in a price war then you've lost. Get out of the segment or redefine your strategy (put prices up and become a premium service for example).

In the end your friend is using the software without contributing to it's development. Without other people's contributions your friend wouldn't have the package. They developed the product, so they should have the overriding say in what happens to their product.
The only thing stopping your friend from pirating is a sense of wrong and right - to quote Oscar Wilde "Morality, like art, means drawing the line somewhere.".
 
Students have to buy their schoolbooks but consumer book purchases are discretionary. I think that, ultimately, ebooks will cost what they are worth to consumers. No matter what the cost to produce books or ebooks, consumers won't pay more than they think is worthwhile on average, at least not for long. Conversely, vendors won't charge much less than the maximum price a consumer thinks is reasonable, since they'd make less profit. There will also be market fluctuation but Mr. and Ms. Consumer make the ultimate decision.
 
tdstom said:
But don't forget the writers. Yes, it's cheaper to distribute e material. But the writers get paid by percent. So a lower price means a lower cut.

Thomas
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Writers can publish themselves on amazon's kindle. Can we do the same on the iBook store?
 
I'll stick with my kindle for the cheaper priced titles and e-ink. Most of the new releases on iBook store were hovering over 9.99 which made no sense

I have an iphone and ipod touch but the magical marketing talk didnt convince me to plop 500.
 
eBooks are increasing in popularity each day. Iphones are the best option to download ebooks. EBooks are a great way to learn. In order to get a child into the reading habit, parents can today use the free ebook online facility and introduce them to the world of books.
 
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