More on eBook Pricing. Now Google gets into the debate…

Here’s a story from the geniuses at The New York Times entitled: “Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight” in which it is proposed that the big publishers are ready to talk tough with Internet Giant Google after recent ‘wins’ in debates over pricing with Apple Tablet and now Amazon.com. Google plans to monopolize eBook sales by launching its own eBook sales center Google Editions. The publishers are determined to set the price.

We’ve been looking at this story for a while now. I continue to be less than impressed by this debate and its debaters because it remains moot until the consumer is allowed to speak. The consumer of course speaks from his/her wallet during the actual act of purchasing eBooks. Do the publishers want to charge more? Well, that’s an old debate. They started out charging more for their eBooks at Amazon.com but Kindle owners quickly snapped Amazon’s leash to bring the price of titles down to $9.99. (Still too much in my opinion, yah?) And they’ll do it again.

Will consumers now pay more because the publishers feel that $9.99 ‘devalues’ books? (I think it’s more a case of ‘re-valuing’ eBooks… uh, guys, if you haven’t noticed, eBooks are not ‘books.’ They’re actually quite different.)

Instituting higher prices simply to prop up publishers’ profits is a poor justification for raising eBook prices, so the consumers will start to share the files they’ve already got… oh, and believe me, the Pirates are listening with their own answer to the debate.

In truth, the Internet eBook retailers know enough about selling digital content to understand that each loss is a hollow victory for the publishers, and these are more temporary concessions made to get greedy merchants to play along in a changing marketplace. If the consumer will only pay $9.99, that’s what the publisher will have to charge.

p.s. My reference to ‘geniuses’ at The New York Times is meant sarcastically or course. First of all, they have everything to gain by talking up and supporting high-priced digital content, since ‘going digital’ without ‘devaluing content’ is the only way that the Times will survive in the digital age and maintain its pre-digital profitability. And secondly, it was the resistance and lack of vision by media leaders like The New York Times that empowered the Internet, the growth of digital media and the devaluation of their ‘actual’ content.

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