Oh, I'm sure Amazon was trying to pull an iTunes. But I think they should have only pulled an iTunes -- left the physical books out of the scuffle. (Also, I dislike Amazon's current contract, though it's better than the first one they had up there, so anything that beats up Amazon about this gets me munching popcorn.)
If MacMillan drops prices sharply after a bit, that'd probably be useful, and to a large extent I think it's reasonable for them to try the usual model of Premium, Moderate, Cheap. I just won't buy their ebooks till they're cheap enough to pick up on a whim! O:>
As I typed over in a different LJ recently, though... Until people see ebooks as the ultimate product and not a spin-off that's capitalizing mostly on work that is already being done for the physical book... Well, isn't the physical book paying for all that already? And won't paper costs and the lack of risk of returns cover the small fee for someone to pour the text into an epub file and mark the chapters? So why pay Final Product prices for something that's... a spin-off to the Final Product?
Of course, if publishers are secretly sure that ebooks are actually going to become Final Products, and paper books the quaint spin-offs, it does behoove them to start setting expectations for the price at paper-book levels.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-02-01 11:22 pm (UTC)If MacMillan drops prices sharply after a bit, that'd probably be useful, and to a large extent I think it's reasonable for them to try the usual model of Premium, Moderate, Cheap. I just won't buy their ebooks till they're cheap enough to pick up on a whim! O:>
As I typed over in a different LJ recently, though... Until people see ebooks as the ultimate product and not a spin-off that's capitalizing mostly on work that is already being done for the physical book... Well, isn't the physical book paying for all that already? And won't paper costs and the lack of risk of returns cover the small fee for someone to pour the text into an epub file and mark the chapters? So why pay Final Product prices for something that's... a spin-off to the Final Product?
Of course, if publishers are secretly sure that ebooks are actually going to become Final Products, and paper books the quaint spin-offs, it does behoove them to start setting expectations for the price at paper-book levels.