Amazon is back in the ring this week, in a battle with publishers that is actually a battle with Apple. Here's the NY Times article.
Apple wants everyone who sells ebooks on the iBookstore to use their agency model, where publishers set their own prices and Apple takes a 30% commission. If they are to do business with Apple, Apple wants publishers to use that model with every ebook seller they sell through. Meanwhile, Amazon wants to keep its current wholesale pricing model.
Both Amazon and Apple want to be sure they're offering the lowest available price on any given ebook, which actually seems reasonable and doable -- except that publishers want to cool off ebook sales by keeping prices high, but might be forced to concede to Amazon's 9.99 price point because... (I know you see this coming) Amazon is once again threatening to pull buy buttons.
Oh grow up, all of you.
Yah, I know how you feel, Angie. A lot of times, reading these articles, I wonder if the print folks are aware that epublishers have been around for some time now and are doing very well selling ebooks for seven bucks or less.
I can't help wondering if we're not on their radar because we're romance and have girl cooties. Probably wrong of me, but there it is.
Posted by: Jessica Freely | March 18, 2010 at 06:34 PM
Oh, good grief. I just want to smack all of them.
I say let the publishers charge whatever they want. When they offer e-books at 15.95 or 23.95 of whatever their "premium" price is for a debut bestseller that's out in hardcover on the dead tree side, and e-book readers laugh themselves silly and go buy something else, maybe the publishers will get a clue.
And on Amazon's side, $9.99 is also too much to spend on an e-book, just not so much so as what the publisher's want to charge. I'll pay maybe seven bucks max for an e-book. I certainly won't pay more for an e-book than for a mass market paperback, and even paying the same price is unlikely. Sorry guys, there's just way too much on offer from the e-pubs for much more reasonable prices.
Angie
Posted by: Angie | March 18, 2010 at 05:30 PM