The suit filed by the Justice Department, aimed at some obvious price-fixing in the market for digital books, is timely. Book publishers had hoped to save their bacon -- the same bacon that the makers of music LPs and CDs failed to save a few years ago -- by locking in higher prices. Apple had hoped to profit heavily, with the currently dead Steve Jobs quoted as saying that of course book buyers would have to pay "a little more" but "that's what you want." (The genius Jobs must have had an odd way of measuring "a little," when it was a difference between $9.99 and $16.99!) Of course the opposite model, the one pioneered by Amazon, was to sell e-books cheaply, gain market share, and hope to push other sellers out of business.
So it's difficult to tell what's best for consumers, but I do note two factors:
(a) Historically, the Amazon model seems similar to the cut-rate booksellers of a decade or two ago, who sought to peddle a limited selection of bestsellers at rock-bottom prices while not worrying too much about other books. They didn't put regular booksellers out of business, though.
(b) I don't know if I'm typical but my own experience suggests that the higher prices of e-books that have prevailed lately have one main result: I buy fewer of them. It's easy to take a flyer on a book you may not like at $9.99; harder, at prices nearly twice that. Surely the contraction of the overall market can't really benefit anyone. Not the publishers, the sellers, or the readers.
The ideal is probably a mixed, diverse market. If the DoJ succeeds in thwacking the price-fixers, such a market could ultimately result.
Great topic. I think it really dnpdees on the book and the author since what works for some may not work for others.In the mid 1990's, for my second novel (and my first for Bantam), I organized a giveaway of autographed copies of my first book with selected romance-friendly Waldenbooks. (It was a gamble because the giveaway book was a romantic mystery and the Bantam book was a romance.)It took a lot of time and a lot of money in postage (I received 1,000 free copies of my first novel), but it worked.
Posted by: Min | June 03, 2012 at 12:06 AM
Considering the wide variety of devices which can be used to read Kindle books, you would suspect that, regardless of whether or not the Apple iPad becomes the most popular reader, Amazon will continue to have a huge influence in the future of digital publishing going forward.
Posted by: Kindle Profits | June 28, 2012 at 11:52 PM