Thanks Jorgen for a link to this Salon story by Dan Gillmor outlining the lose-lose scenario that publishers have foisted onto the public by taking pricing away from Amazon and other book sellers, and switching to the more expensive agency model that is now showing eBooks priced higher than their physical paper equivalents.
It’s an excellent piece that shows the true greed of these publishers who are trying to push up their failing profits but sticking it to the consumer with grossly inflated price structures.
This kind of thing just slows down an otherwise exploding digital publishing market. It’s a rip off and unfair to consumers who have adopted the new technology.
As a result of this highway robbery, overpricing by publishers is creating the environment for eBook piracy and illegal file sharing to flourish. Jorgen sent along another link to this story at The Next Web that goes into great detail about the negative impacts unfair pricing has on an otherwise (generally) honest public. People only think about obtaining information illegally when they feel they are being cheated. And OVERPRICING DRM-locked digital eBooks is cheating.
On the other hand there is a silver lining for independent authors and small publishing houses who are not ruled by greed, and can introduce new authors to the reading public at affordable prices. That’s a win for the reader too!
1 comment
I find it offensive that publishers are having their way with authors, distributors, and customers alike by charging outrageous prices for a product for which they have virtually NO real investment, save their own skins. Once an integral part of the book industry, they are now little more than the crime bosses of the book world. As an author, I am dismayed that publishers, less concerned with fairness than with massive greed, are hijacking what could be perhaps the greatest tool for good – the ebook – and screwing everyone else involved in the process for the sake of their own almighty bottom lines. Their own costs – editing, typesetting, printing, promoting, distributing, etc. – are but a fraction of what they once were. Yet they refuse to pass those savings to their authors and customers.
If there is a movement to stop this robbery, I’m for it. Sign me up.