Amazon's stronghold on e-book pricing crumbles, will renegotiate with Macmillan and HarperCollins

I have a Kindle. I can honestly say that I wont buy an E-Book for $12-$15. I will just download the public domain free title and download other cheaper books. I dont go out and spend the high prices for brand new hardback books, I cannot imagine why I would operate that way on Kindle. I actually think that Apple’s move to charge more, will actually hurt overall E-Book sales. Part of the beauty is that they are cheaper. I will just revert to going to half priced books

So now books will cost just as much on paperback as for the e-reader edition… That makes no logical sense whatsoever!

This is the first time time I’ve ever known competition to raise the price on an item. I’ll be boycotting MacMillan and Harper Collins.

So will I. Since Amazon’s hand was forced to raise the price on these e-books (which, by the way, is absurd since e-books don’t need publishing or materials to print them at all), I will do everything in my power to not buy any books whatsoever from MacMillan and Harper Collins.

Amazon never really had much stronghold on e-book pricing.

They only introduced the $9.99 flat rate pricing days before iPad. Before that most books on Amazon cost more than $9.99.

Seeing how everything is crumbling right now, I wonder if they made the announcement with any consent from publishers at all.

no more eBooks for me. they’ll drop prices if people stop buying..

This is kind of a gamble by Macmillan. According to Macmillan’s own statement, they not making more $ off of Amazon, just want Amazon to sell their product for more. This will definitely lead to fewer Amazon sales & therefore fewer Amazon profits for them.

I guess they’re betting on iTunes sales outpacing the drop off in sales from Amazon, and they’re probably right as much as it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

http://bit.ly/9lnOPg

I don’t understand how this is Apples fault. The publishers have always disliked the $9.99 maximum for book sales. If I was the author of a publication that required me to fly over seas and spend thousands of dollars in research, I would naturally sell my book for more money than say a kids book. BUT, I am forced to sell at a much lower price so I can’t recoup efficiently the money spent writing the book because the publisher isn’t making that much money because of Amazon limits. Thy have ALWAYS been unhappy. The only reason this is coming out now is because publishers are given another avenue they think will be successful.

This would have happened with any company. If Microsoft were to open an ebook store and allow higher than $9 for books, we would be going through the same thing. The problem has always been there. The publishers were just baked into a corner is all.

I have not read the other comments on the subject, but I for one am pissed. How dare they charge the same price for an e-book as they would for a soft cover, you don’t get the benefit of lending and you save them the cost of printing! this hurts the whole e-book industry…

I agree with the publishers. They are the ones putting up money to pay the authors. They are the ones putting up money to print the hardcovers and paperbacks. What is Amazon doing? Reselling a product. Price should NOT be totally dictated by a simple reseller. The publishers should be able to determine a minimum selling price so its paper book sales are not cannibalized by e-book sales, thus leaving them with excess inventory. This is just basic business sense. The business owners out there will understand.

And for those of you who say you will refuse to pay $12-15 for an e-book, consider that you could spend 24-30 hours enjoying that e-book at a cost of 50 cents per hour. Now, compare that to the fact that you just paid $13 to see Avatar in 3D at a cost of nearly $5 per hour. I’d say that $12-15 is still a great value.

If money is a factor, why did you spend so much to buy a Kindle in the first place? Image?

I haven’t bought a book on paper for two years, because all my long-form reading is now done on a Kindle (along with some on a nook and a Sony Reader Digital Edition, for comparison). I’m not too worried about these pricing moves by Macmillan etc. There are many more books to read on my Kindle than I can buy, so I’ll simply keep a lookout for publishers who seek to gain an advantage by pricing new releases competitively. As James McQuivey of Forrester said in an interview on my podcast this week, the publishers do not have a cartel that enforces prices. I am quite loyal to Amazon for lots of reasons, so I look forward to the day when market pressure will drive the price back to $9.99 but Amazon will, thanks to the Macmillan Gambit, be making its 30-percent agency fee instead of taking a loss on each bestseller sold.

Amazon is losing money on each ebook sale, which means it is not sustainable.

I prefer to stick to common sense.

If something doesn’t add up, no matter how good it sounds, IT’S A TRAP!

FAIR’s blog recently posted this article showing the profit margins of eBooks vs traditional. It makes a good case that ebooks don’t need to be more than ten dollars. But also reveals that publishing houses take a greater share of the profits with eBooks. Shame shame shame.

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/03/02/read-the-chart-not-the-nyt-article-to-get-the-straight-dope-on-book-profits/

I’ve ever known competition to raise the price on an item

Amazon is a bad caving in, after the iPad burns and crashes (btw typing on an imac, and I own an iPhone) Harper Row or whomever, will be left with no market for their ebooks and losing sales, market space as well as future authors. Blaming Apple is a very small part of this.

Pretty sure the below quote from the article above alleges that point but why actually read when you can comment first right?

“Apple in its agreement with us which has not been disclosed in detail does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices. There will be prices very much less than the printed copies of books but still will not be fixed in a way that Amazon has been doing it.”

1. I’m not a kid. 2. Before Apple got into the game last week, there really was only one big game in town, which was the Amazon model for selling these books at a loss. So yeah, I guess I can see your point on solely blaming Apple but they’re not entirely blameless at the game changing.

The publishers are completely taking advantage, but Apple is providing them with the means to do it in the contracts that allow for higher prices.

If it’s your point that the publishers are just using Apple as an excuse or opportunity to be greedy, then I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, but I don’t think Apple is that dumb, nor upset, at the fact that Amazon has to do this now if they want to keep getting current new bestsellers in a timely fashion.

Attention all…I am the SPAMMER police!