I’ve had to explain (or felt compelled to explain) to several friends and students why and how popular books are priced and why publishers charge “so much” for electronic books, which have a theoretical production cost approaching zero. To save myself that time, and to offer a more cogent explanation than I can often manage, I’d like to point to comment #11 in this discussion of MacMillan and Amazon’s quarrel over e-book pricing. If you follow the link there to Scalzi’s discussion, you get further links to the NYTimes (soon to be behind a paywall) and a letter from MacMillan’s president on the issue.
On a related issue, this story at the NYTimes, “With Kindle, the Best Sellers Don’t Need to Sell,” addresses how giving away books can be a money-maker. If you’re pressed for time, here’s the nut: giving away a new or unknown author’s book leads people to buy books by that author. What’s funny about this, to me anyway, is the number of authors who are apoplectic at the very idea of giving away their books. This points to the equation of price and value that exists in so many of our heads. If my book is free, then it must be worthless.
Oh, and what’s with that iPad not having a camera? My mom wants to Skype with her grandson!
02 Feb 2010
Some nice coverage of all this over at Salon, where Laura Miller discusses some of the economics of publishing, as well as the impact of the iPad on the Amazon/MacMillan dust-up: “Kindle killer.”
06 Feb 2010
Who Moved My Buy Button? - A service for authors to monitor whether or not Amazon is allowing people to buy their books.
