Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews • Hacker News Board

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#41

Post by bhousel » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 4:58 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #21

Sadly, Apple is largely to blame for this mess. Well, if you ignore the publishers. Ebooks started as a wholesale pricing model. The publishers would sell them to the likes of Amazon at some fixed price. Amazon would then set their own price. This is very similar to the brick-and-mortar pricing model. In some cases Amazon would sell those books at a loss in an effort to grow the Kindle platform. Publishers didn't lik…

Here's a good article from a few months ago about the economics of ebook pricing. It supports your comments about the publishers having too much control over the pricing.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/01/16/why-do-ebooks-cos...

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#42

Post by orangecat » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:08 PM UTC

originalgeek wrote: post #39

hotlikearobot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, "bombing" review sites is entirely a market action. The market works through information. The most common way that information is disseminated is through prices, but that doesn't mean it is the only way. Reviews, etc, allow one to more accurately decide how to value something.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action; what action comes as a result of a review? It could go either way as the interpretation of the review is up to the reader of the review. It seems that ebooks sales are causing more action than the reviews. And I'll add my anecdote: my view is the negative reviewers don't understand the concept of premium cost for premium access.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action

Sure they do. Markets need informed buyers to function well.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#43

Post by cabalamat » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

originalgeek wrote: post #39

hotlikearobot wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, "bombing" review sites is entirely a market action. The market works through information. The most common way that information is disseminated is through prices, but that doesn't mean it is the only way. Reviews, etc, allow one to more accurately decide how to value something.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action; what action comes as a result of a review? It could go either way as the interpretation of the review is up to the reader of the review. It seems that ebooks sales are causing more action than the reviews. And I'll add my anecdote: my view is the negative reviewers don't understand the concept of premium cost for premium access.

> what action comes as a result of a review?

Dissemination of information, which can lead to people making different decisions. For example, a would-be purchaser may feel a price is a bit steep but would have bought the book anyway, but after reading the reviews decides not to in solidarity with the other reviewers.

Or an author might get feedback that their fans aren't happy with the pricisng structure, and may take their publisher to task because of it.

A market is essentially a distributed information processing mechanism. Seen in this light, information transfers that are not buying/selling can be seen as part of the market. For example, haggling has always been part of market behaviour.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#44

Post by runevault » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:14 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #17

ig1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it. Valuing a book by it's physical properties is a practice that's gone on for far too long. Lots of technical books are full of "padding" and duplication because no-one will buy a 50 page book which concisely provides the useful information for $10-$20. It waste a huge amount of time both of the author and the readers.

"Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it." I think if we are talking about entertainment books (novels and such), there simply is too much competition. At the end of the day, a lot of those entertainment books could be exchanged for another entertainment book. I suppose for similar reasons cinema tickets tend to not vary too much with the content of the movie?

Yes and no on replaceability. On one hand you could argue within a range one book is as good as another. However for many people, once they come to enjoy an authors work, that particular author is "not replaceable" because you want his unique writing voice/take on things/etc.

Until you find those authors you adore to that degree, however, yes books are totally interchangeable after a certain quality threshold is passed.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#45

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:14 PM UTC

hotlikearobot wrote: post #34

tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This economic analysis is interesting (seriously!). But it is also facile. Yes, ebooks are worth "less" because they can't be resold. but they may be worth more, and maybe significantly more, because they are much more convenient. Durability, resellability, and convenience are benefits. If you need the first two, you can buy paper. You are not entitled to dictate that convenience can't cost 2x (durability + resellabi…

To be fair, "bombing" review sites is entirely a market action. The market works through information. The most common way that information is disseminated is through prices, but that doesn't mean it is the only way. Reviews, etc, allow one to more accurately decide how to value something.

You're playing games with the definition of a "review". People looking for book reviews are in virtually all cases looking for information about the content of the book. I can't win the nerd argument with you that there is no information whatsoever in the review bombs, so I won't bother; I'll just rest my case that the information is below the noise threshold, and adds so much extra noise as to make the reviews useless.

The clear intent of the reviews is to hold the publisher hostage; nobody gets to conveniently read good-faith reviews until the nerds are satisfied.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#46

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:16 PM UTC

alsocasey wrote: post #35

tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This economic analysis is interesting (seriously!). But it is also facile. Yes, ebooks are worth "less" because they can't be resold. but they may be worth more, and maybe significantly more, because they are much more convenient. Durability, resellability, and convenience are benefits. If you need the first two, you can buy paper. You are not entitled to dictate that convenience can't cost 2x (durability + resellabi…

I find it equally facile to rely on the market to set the price when dealing with an industry that has a history of price fixing and collusion...

How exactly do publishers get to fix the price of books on the Internet? If you want to sell a book below $9.99, what's stopping you?

What am I missing about this comment? I am asking seriously: 6 people voted it up, and my read is that it's content-free. I'm willing to believe I'm simply wrong about it and I missed a subtlety, but I'd sure like to know what it is.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#47

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

bhousel wrote: post #41

cletus wrote: post #21

Sadly, Apple is largely to blame for this mess. Well, if you ignore the publishers. Ebooks started as a wholesale pricing model. The publishers would sell them to the likes of Amazon at some fixed price. Amazon would then set their own price. This is very similar to the brick-and-mortar pricing model. In some cases Amazon would sell those books at a loss in an effort to grow the Kindle platform. Publishers didn't lik…

Here's a good article from a few months ago about the economics of ebook pricing. It supports your comments about the publishers having too much control over the pricing. http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/01/16/why-do-ebooks-cos...

For the publisher to have any effective control over the price of a book, they have to control the distribution channel for books. But they manifestly do not. If you want to sell a book for $0.99, you can do so today.

Three of the elephants in the room are:

* That the $9.99 price point comes in a package deal that includes promotional advantages authors want

* That the $9.99 price point is calculated by publishers to maximize return on the ebook product offering, not to maximize the number of people who buy the ebook (but this is obviously how market pricing is supposed to work)

* That the $9.99 price point comes with access to the publisher's brick and mortar distribution system, which is much more powerful than the indie distribution system (but is also dying).

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#48

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

jswinghammer wrote: post #30

tptacek wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If $9.99 is too much for an ebook, then publishers will not survive selling ebooks at $9.99. If the market clears at $9.99, then $9.99 is by definition not too much for an ebook. If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets. † For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011 .

Too much is of course a subjective term. The problem with ebooks is that once the book is written they lack scarcity which makes them fairly different from most consumer products. A market clearing price is sort of weird in this instance since we know that the supply can expand to meet infinite consumer demand. If the parent poster is correct then we'll see a price correction towards a lower price. We'll also see a m…

There is no natural law of scarcity which suppliers are required to honor. They can produce as much or as little of a good as they want. The producer controls scarcity of their offering. The market responds by identifying substitutes, not by coercing the producer into relaxing scarcity.

If your logic held, every paper book would cost the same amount; _The Very Hungry Caterpiller_ would cost within pennies of the same amount as Volume 1 of _The Art Of Computer Programming_. After all, you're not paying for the paper. Judging from the amount of junk mail in my mailbox every morning, paper is pretty cheap.

Clearly it is also the case that _The Art Of Computer Programming_ as an ebook has exactly the same scarcity as _Twilight: New Moon_'s ebook; according to your logic, they must also cost the same.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#49

Post by tptacek » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #42

originalgeek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action; what action comes as a result of a review? It could go either way as the interpretation of the review is up to the reader of the review. It seems that ebooks sales are causing more action than the reviews. And I'll add my anecdote: my view is the negative reviewers don't understand the concept of premium cost for premium access.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action Sure they do. Markets need informed buyers to function well.

I agree completely, so, artificially pumping review sites full of reviews by people who haven't actually read the book as a protest movement doesn't seem like a market-improving action to me.

Re: Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

#50

Post by orangecat » Wed, Apr 06, 2011, 5:43 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #49

orangecat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether reviews qualify as a market action Sure they do. Markets need informed buyers to function well.

I agree completely, so, artificially pumping review sites full of reviews by people who haven't actually read the book as a protest movement doesn't seem like a market-improving action to me.

First, the reviews inform people that the books are available cheaper in other formats, which they might not have known. Second, if the reviews do cause the publisher to lower the price, that will presumably result in more sales, and there will be more consumer surplus gained than producer surplus lost. Boom, market improvement.