Of course consumers want to pay the lowest price they can find of a particular product. Hence why piracy is so rampant. That doesn't create a healthy market though.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Rebuts Antitrust Charges Over E-Book Pricing
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Of course consumers want to pay the lowest price they can find of a particular product. Hence why piracy is so rampant. That doesn't create a healthy market though.
Argh. Stop it already. Just drop the damn prices already. E-book pricing shouldn't be close to the prices of printed books. I understand the pricing of digital music since music can be so easily pirated. You can buy physical media, rip the music and share or copy the CD. This is virtually impossible with an actual book. I don't even know if it's possible to share an e-book after you're done with it to a friend. It's unfortunate since I really prefer the look and "feel" of the iBooks interface when reading but I always have to default to Amazon because I refuse to pay such ridiculous prices. Purchasing books from iBooks would be my last resort if the physical books are more expensive or can't wait.
But what about this:
So giving consumers a better deal is a bad thing?
Jobs really wanted innovation in the textbook area, where the costs are ludicrous and actually hamper education. The only catch, of course, was that instead of buying shelves of books, a student (or a school) would have to shell out for an iPad. But once the iPad was bought, textbooks were kept at a really reasonable maximum of $15. And they'd never go out of date. Instead of a semester's worth of books costing upwards of $500 (the amount of an iPad), a student would pay a maximum of $75. I think that's a pretty good economic model for students. No one would force them to get an iPad; students would still be free to shell out for paper books if they wanted.
The wholesale model relies on the producer of the product (i.e. the publisher) setting a wholesale price that covers all of their costs and offers them a sufficient margin.
If the margins are too low, it's because they set the price too low.
The wholesale model is not something magical and scary, it's how virtually everything we eat is sold.
----------
I don't understand how you've linked what you just quoted to that.
The textbook scheme Apple has announced has nothing to do with this lawsuit.
It could continue with or without the agency model.
Do tell... The defenses I am hearing for Apple now are virtually identical to the ones I heard used to excuse Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviors ten years ago. Microsoft made the argument that they would be unable to innovate and do great things for consumers if they weren't allowed to hogtie their competitors. This is only a somewhat abridged version of their defense. Their sense of entitlement was jaw-dropping. The company was a lot more popular before the trial then after it.
Silly, Silly Human....
But in doing so, crippling the economy!? That really makes sense. By giving you a better deal ( 15% off the price of a $14.99 purchase ) on an e-book, but in doing so sending the stock market down 20%, and gas prices rising 5% to 10% over the next few months ( maybe even years ), really sounds like a "winner of a deal" to us all, don't it!?
You probably will only read the first few pages of that e-book before you get bored with it and start surfing the web anyways. ha ha
But in doing so, crippling the economy!? That really makes sense. By giving you a better deal ( 15% off the price of a $14.99 purchase ) on an e-book, but in doing so sending the stock market down 20%, and gas prices rising 5% to 10% over the next few months ( maybe even years ), really sounds like a "winner of a deal" to us all, don't it!?
You probably will only read the first few pages of that e-book before you get bored with it and start surfing the web anyways. ha ha
Right, but not when your main source of revenue from e-books is Amazon, which sells at a lost to dominate the market, effectively devaluing your products.
Since when did we start eating books?
Wholesale model made a lot more sense for brick and mortar stores, it makes almost zero sense for digital products.
Whether eBook prices are currently too high or not is irrelevant, the agency model is still the more appropriate model for digital products, as proven by every single digital marketplace in existence.
The Agency model does nothing to prevent "devaluation" of books, if anything it makes them look overpriced.
People go on the Kindle Store and see that books from the big publishers are more expensive than all of the others.
They also see that those big publishers ask more for their ebooks than for the paper book.
This leads to the agency model books selling worse than the others on the store.
People aren't stupid, they can tell when they're being ripped off.
----------
But in doing so, crippling the economy!? That really makes sense. By giving you a better deal ( 15% off the price of a $14.99 purchase ) on an e-book, but in doing so sending the stock market down 20%, and gas prices rising 5% to 10% over the next few months ( maybe even years ), really sounds like a "winner of a deal" to us all, don't it!?
You probably will only read the first few pages of that e-book before you get bored with it and start surfing the web anyways. ha ha
The amount of ebooks being sold is minuscule when compared to the entire book market, let alone the US economy.
With better competition, even more books could be bought by consumers.
Quality and variety of content.
You sound so sure of these claims. I'm pretty sure that only your first sentence is completely correct.
When do they sue Apple over the App Store?
Proven by what metric?
Agency Model book sales are lower than non-agency book sales.
Artificially high prices are putting consumers off. I don't see how that can be seen as effective.
----------
WHAT!? So you buy a specific book from Apple and it comes with more content?
Amazon has the largest store (i.e. variety)
Apple does not insist that developers have to sell their Apps at the cheapest price on the App Store.
They can sell their App cheaper on Windows, Android, Linux, Blackberry, Bada, etc.
... and many do!
There's also nothing in Apple's agreements that would stop a different retailer (e.g. the Android Market) arranging an entirely different model for paying developers (e.g. the wholesale model).
The fact it's the model used by the most successful digital marketplaces?
Being anti-productive and moving back to the wholesale model for digital goods would destroy businesses on the internet just as the wholesale model destroyed brick and mortar bookstores in the real world.
This is where your argument is backwards. Artificially low prices by Amazon are leading consumers into thinking the regular prices are overly expensive.
iTunes is an agency model, isn't? Brick and mortar music stores are healty, don't they?
You guys are missing a crucial point.
Apple is not just encouraging new price points.
They are encouraging a completely new generation of interactive books.
The value is generated by the quality of content.
Apple is not just encouraging new price points.
They are encouraging a completely new generation of interactive books.
The value is generated by the quality of content.
I believe his point is that, in the long run, if authors and publishers cannot sell at $8.99, and Amazon's artificially low prices force them to sell at $5.99, they'll have less ability to fund new books and content.
This is because there's a difference in platform. We can't go and run Android apps on our iPhone anyway, but ebooks can be purchased from anywhere and run on anything.
If Amazon released an app to iOS that allowed downloading apps at 30% cheaper than the iOS version and was otherwise identical, leading consumers to only download the artificially lowered priced apps from Amazon, you think that would be a good thing for the app market?
How many times has to be said that publishers got the full $8.99?
Artificially lowered? Why?
And there exists that. Have you heard about the Amazon App store for Android competing with Google App Store?
I dunno, seems more politically motivated by Amazon than anything else...
Yeah, and aliens are going to land tomorrow and destroy the planet with a gravity force inducing star powered laser gun!
No DOJ HAS evidence, I'm pretty sure it's not made it up. Like I said, we will see over the coming months.
Not at all. One on my street just closed down last week. In fact, I can't think of many stores I can buy CDs at anymor- oh wait, Walmart or Amazon.com.
Additionally, the largest gaming store chain in Britain, Game, went bankrupt last week due to being undercut by supermarkets and online stores in video game prices. Because why you ask? The wholesale model.
Another example is the milk industry in Britain. Milk farmers actually lose money on milk manufacture because the supermarkets fight over the prices and pass the cost-cutting onto the farmers, giving them no choice. Why? The wholesale model.
Although the wholesale model is a poor model in many ways, I don't dispute the necessity of the wholesale model for physical products in many instances. But when it comes to digital products, the necessities to use the wholesale model cease to exist. Retailers fighting over who has the lowest price on a wholesale model sucks for the content creators, their publishers, the retailers, and eventually it'll come back and bite the consumers in the long run. It benefits absolutely nobody except for some discounted products in the short-term.
Boo-Yah!!
You are correct here. Instead of the traditional old-fashion e-book, consisting of black text on white pages, where you flip from page to page, resulting in a semi-boring experience.
Now, Apple's idea of an e-book experience, where you can resize and color the text to your desire. Have someone narrate the text to you, with sound effects in the background, moving animations on each page. Animations that might actually be interactive to the touch ( or tilt of your device you are reading it on ). Links to other resources on the internet, and a bevy of features that I'm sure I'm forgetting here.
And to top it off, if your version is updated, you just click on a button to update it for free in about 30 seconds! Let's see you update that thick calculus book you bought for your Calculus 121 class for your electrical engineering degree from 4 years ago. See if the publisher will update you to a new version for free! Good luck with that!
You are correct here. Instead of the traditional old-fashion e-book, consisting of black text on white pages, where you flip from page to page, resulting in a semi-boring experience.
Now, Apple's idea of an e-book experience, where you can resize and color the text to your desire. Have someone narrate the text to you, with sound effects in the background, moving animations on each page. Animations that might actually be interactive to the touch ( or tilt of your device you are reading it on ). Links to other resources on the internet, and a bevy of features that I'm sure I'm forgetting here.
And to top it off, if your version is updated, you just click on a button to update it for free in about 30 seconds! Let's see you update that thick calculus book you bought for your Calculus 121 class for your electrical engineering degree from 4 years ago. See if the publisher will update you to a new version for free! Good luck with that!
There's no reason why they cannot do this innovation with a competitive pricing model.
Wait, so the most important music store doesn't have had any importance on the brick and mortar stores closing.
Yap, yes, Amazon, the guilty one.
Which is why they even introduced Author in the first place, as a tool to accompany this push.
Given, it is an over simplified application, really for the use of individuals rather than publishers. But obviously the point here is to encourage better and more engaging content, and really redefine what "books" traditionally are. It's aiming for a new way to consume content, similar to the advancement of interactive websites.
I'd imagine Adobe would update InDesign to take advantage of publishing complex interactive ebooks in the future.
Given, it is an over simplified application, really for the use of individuals rather than publishers. But obviously the point here is to encourage better and more engaging content, and really redefine what "books" traditionally are. It's aiming for a new way to consume content, similar to the advancement of interactive websites.
I'd imagine Adobe would update InDesign to take advantage of publishing complex interactive ebooks in the future.