Digital Book World posted on the impact Agency Pricing is having on the eBook market and naively wonders if it is suppressing sales. It certainly is slowing sales for the digital titles of publishers who are greedily jacking their prices up. Who is going to buy an eBook if you can order the paperback or hard cover for close to the same price?
And it is certainly injecting new life into eBook Piracy. Google any book title and you won’t have to click through many pages before the pirated versions appear.
The group least affected by publishers forcing Agency Pricing on the market are Indie authors. (At least, those who have not signed away their options to Amazon Kindle Unlimited.)
Indie authors tend to set fair prices for their digital titles, and many have reported a leveling off of the drop in sales caused by Kindle Unlimited and the threat of Agency Pricing. Still others have marked a modest rise in sales.
We’ve said it since day one at eBook Rumors: No DRM + Fair Prices = eBook sales, Market growth, and Piracy Reduction.
Do they think that consumers cannot tell when they are being manipulated?
