Amazon Caves to Macmilllan's eBook Price Hike
It was a busy and dramatic weekend for Amazon and Macmillan. The online etailer and publisher were caught up in a bitter price war with Macmillan trying to impose a $14.99 price for electronic versions of hardcover books.
The move to charge users 150 percent of the usual cost for ebooks displeased Amazon to no end. To make matters worse, Macmillan offered Amazon an ultimatum; the publisher informed Amazon that the topic was not up for negotiation and said that if the new price was not accepted, Macmillan would not be offering any content through Amazon.
Amazon retaliated with a kind of, "You can't fire me, because I quit!" response. The etailer pulled all Macmillan content from its store. The Macmillan titles are back now but Amazon has since released a statement conceding that it has as the publisher represents one of the "big six," the company has no choice but to cave to Macmillan's requests.
“We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for an ebook. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.”
Yowza. Not cool for Kindle users.
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Greedy bastards >.
Monopoly.
lol. Ownership =/= Monopoly. That is like saying Amazon has a monopoly over their kindle ereader.
Amazon should have stuck to it's guns.
I may pay that much for a digital book. Depends how badly I want to read it, but I usually wait for the paper-back pricing.
Amazon does have one thing going for them, they do understand customer service, IMO.
$14.99?... wasn't that the price S. Jobs said for the ebooks on iBook?... Guess the book publishers are taking advantages on the competetion on the eReader market.
sad.... that's what happen how a monoply suppier take advantages in a competive market....>_< ..
(shrug> then I'll just keep down loading the audiobook torrents.
Ebooks are losers all around.
1.full of DRM
2.no more real 1st editions
3.can not display your books in a library
4.can not resell them
5.no collectors value
I am so glad i will never buy one of these.and i do own around 1200 books.many are wonderful condition 1st editions.i sold one of my books one time and payed for a new 21" CRT Workstation monitor ofr around $500.
you think you will ever have a $500 sale on an ebook ???
That's why I don't read books
$15 dollars for a Hardcover E-BOOK?!!! WTH? How can you charge that much for a book thats nothing but e-paper? Its not like your actually publishing a physical copy of the book. I purchased a physical book for $7.99 at Amazon and the e-book is the same price. At what point do publishers and authors think that I am going to buy a file for $7.99 when I can get a nice physical copy for the same price. It might be nice at .99 cents each if you buy the actual book, as I would love to put them on a Kindle or a Sony e-book reader and carry a couple hundred books with me on a trip instead of lugging around a couple physical books. For now, at their current price I'm not buying.
gorehound, sure it's nice to have a library, but exactly how environmentally friendly is that? E-books, while not perfect, are a huge step toward saving the Earth.
Go capitalism, thank god we live in a country where competition exists. If at first u can't get a reseller to sell your product at a high premium, find one that will and fire the former. Consumer loses again.
I don't agree with a %150 price hike, but people need to stop trying to make a point that it's "nothing but data". I'm sure the DVD for Dragon Age: Origins is worth a few cents, but I was happy to pay $50 for it. (That's an analogy by the way.) And complaining about DRM? Are you saying physical books have less restriction? Well, I guess you could always just go to Kinko's.(That one is sarcasm)
But still, monopoly = bad.
$14.99?... wasn't that the price S. Jobs said for the ebooks on iBook?... Guess the book publishers are taking advantages on the competetion on the eReader market. sad.... that's what happen how a monoply suppier take advantages in a competive market....>_< ..
Interesting you should point that out...usually competition works to LOWER prices in a given market. But thanks to Apple fanboys who will pay anything for anything shiny and made by Apple, Macmillan can now turn around and say,"Well all those retards are going to pay $15 for their ebooks, so I guess that's now our price point too." (I foresee the same problem with the iPad...what the hell is Apple doing in the tampon business anyway?!)
What's next? Are the record companies going to start charging $15 for an individual downloadable song? That's how ridiculous this is.
It may or may not work. We'll just have to wait and see how it works out.
Hell, I went to the local book store and paid $60 for 8 books.
Not hardcover of course, but printing costs help determine the price.
$0.00001 in bandwidth costs vs. printing costs (unknown value)...
Bastards.
I'm also not going to pay $1.50 for a single damned song...
There is no passion or sense of ownership in possessing a file. It’s not like the current readers raise the experience either. Owning a book, CD, DVD, LP is more than just the content so charging more for the ‘soulless’ version is laughable.
They need to firmly understand that the electronic version is all about convenience as it offers nothing else for the senses. On this basis it has a fraction of the value and therefore should be priced accordingly.
There is no passion or sense of ownership in possessing a file. It’s not like the current readers raise the experience either. Owning a book, CD, DVD, LP is more than just the content so charging more for the ‘soulless’ version is laughable.
They need to firmly understand that the electronic version is all about convenience as it offers nothing else for the senses. On this basis it has a fraction of the value and therefore should be priced accordingly.
It will all sort itself out in the end - supply and demand. If we aren't buying the price will come down to a point where we are prepared to buy. Just look at how much a DVD comes down in price even a few months after its release. Okay, so there is no physical stock to contend with but the principal is the same - the price will always be set to meet the demand.
Frankly I think $10.00 is too much to pay for most e-books. The only cost the publisher has is what they pay the author and editor, which is typically 10% of the selling price. If you assume that an author is going to want $2.50 per book (10% of a $25 cover price) then if the publisher were to charge $5.00 per e-book they would still be making close to $2.00 per volume (subtracting out advertising costs).
This is a case of trying to get whatever the market will bear. Ultimately they will be able to get the big bucks for popular authors, but they are seriously on crack if they expect to get $15.00 for little known/obscure books.
This account is almost certainly untrue. There is no "usual cost for ebooks." The ten dollar price point was Amazon's unilateral decision to sell ebooks at a loss.
Nor was there an ultimatum. What there was, was a dick move by Amazon that blew up in their face. Sorry, Amazon.