I'm having a bit of trouble over just where this article and response should go. If the mods in their wisdom think it should be elsewhere, please assist. Why Should eBooks Cost $15? Last week’s announcement by the Justice Department that they are suing Apple and several of the world’s biggest book publishers for conspiring to keep eBook prices high generated plenty of media coverage. One challenge in wading through this coverage is that most of it tends to be written by…journalists. And some journalists are also authors. And authors seem to have a soft spot for publishers who fight for higher prices. So, we get lots of coverage sympathetic to the plight of the poor book publishers. Amazon is evil, you see. Code: http://www.pakman.com/2012/04/16/why-should-ebooks-cost-15/ This author gets it. In the process of explaining why a $15 ebook doesn't cut it, he unknowingly explains why the free market isn't free and part of the reason why the economy is failing. Antitrust laws are about preventing monopolies. Monopolies protect whoever holds one and isolates them from the market forces as you can only get the product or services from that one source. This is why they are regulated to prevent them from what is called 'cornering the market'. Cornering the market means you have the sole and only source for a materiel, product, or service, and only you can supply that. Many have tried through options to corner the market on raw materials, such as silver or platinum. Because they are rare and valuable materials that are required to meet today's living standards. But other products can be cornered as well. Here we have book publishers trying to corner the market on ebooks to provide the cash to keep their physical printing side funded. But the logic that ebooks require DRM and a $15 price doesn't hold up to market forces. Once an ebook is made and done, other than bandwidth,a website, a distribution center, and software to sell and deliver it, there are no other costs to speak of. You don't need ink by the gallon, you don't need paper by the roll, you don't need book binding machines and the materials for it, you don't need printing presses, a building to house it in, you don't need to meet annual safety inspections, fire codes, insurance costs, except for one building to handle it all, world wide. The internet provides an endless shelf. A shelf that turns long tail in to a reality. In today's book market, physical stores compare how fast books move to what space is available in the floor. If a book doesn't move, it needs be sold on sale to make room for something that does sell. Floor space and shelf space are at a premium. But with the internet, even a book that sells a few copies a year is worth having a space in the sales list because storage and reproduction costs are near nil given you have to have it anyway for the rest. The reason the economy is in such dire straights in part, is that the senior management and CEOs have been getting the near total income increases while workers have been going on pennies in comparison and seeing the work force cut to produce more work for the same pay. US production rates for workers are among the worlds' highest but pay for that productivity increase has not stood side by side with the work produced. This in turn, changes the market forces as there is less discretionary income to be spent by the majority of the market. Increasing the price of an ebook does not increase sales nor profit. You reach diminishing returns where every increase in the price results in even less sales. For an insubstantial ebook I can not hold in my hand the value is nearer zero than $15. I have a hard time with any sort of sympathy in a plot between Apple and the publishers over trying to strangle Amazon out of the market.
