Sunday, January 31, 2010

What's Wrong With Sellers Setting The Price?

I've already seen some rancor directed toward the recent development in which Amazon has reluctantly agreed to honour publisher Macmillan's pricing model of asking more than $9.99 for e-books. Previously, Amazon had steadfastly refused to sell any e-books for more that signature price, period. I imagine that, to some people, this represents a (possibly temporary) defeat for "the little guy" since $14.99 seems too much to pay for an electronic copy of a book. I totally get that. And I'd personally show my support for that stance (if I were a buyer of e-books) by simply refusing to buy at that price. I wouldn't steal the content (go to a torrent site, for example); I'd eschew it entirely, until such time as it became available at a price that I thought was appropriate for the content and media. Isn't that the right way to drive pricing models: through supply and demand? If you supply what I don't demand, or you supply it at a price that I'm unwilling to pay, then I don't buy it; in other words, I go without. And if enough people think like me, market pressure forces a reset of the price.

As someone who's at least toyed with the idea of making my next book available in electronic form, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart. I want the right to price my book at whatever I choose, and I want everyone else in the world to have the right to buy it at the price I set or pass it by. Isn't that what a free market pre-supposes? I'd hate to have someone tell me that it had to be priced below a certain mark in order to go on sale. Advice to that effect is one thing; mandating it (as Amazon wants to, with a $9.99 max for e-books) is quite another.

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