Amazon bows to Macmillan on eBook pricing

I agree with Amazon, the fact that Macmillan do not have to invest in printing too many or to not enough copies vastly changes their prices. And of course, it saves the tree.

Greed is what it's all about. Well, I'll certainly not be buying any Macmillan publications.

By treadmill on 2 Feb 2010

£15 for a digital file? One copy locked? Why? You could buy the hardback for less than that.

It's so utterly absurd. If they said - buy the paperbook, get the ebook free that'd be worth having.

What frustrates is that publishers do make a lot of money from authors. There are advertising costs, yes, but a new author gets less than 50p from each book. Printers about the same (it costs about 50p to print a short run. A lot , lot less for the latest Harry Potter as the scale involved reduces costs). If only there was a site where authors could sell their work for say, £2.50. Cut out the middle man completely and his inflated costs.

By bubbles16 on 2 Feb 2010

Amazon should start adding disclaimer 'We would love to sell you this book for less but we've been bullied by Macmillan. So we recommend you get yourself a paperback for £6.99 or less.' :)

By Josefov on 2 Feb 2010

Let's all just stop buying Macmillan book for a month or two and see what happens that is books and e books!

By sandman652001 on 2 Feb 2010

It's called a "rip-off"

Maybe I'm comparing apples to oranges here, but as I read roughly the same number of books in English *and* Russian, it's funny to see a completely different approach to e-publishing in these two regions. While "West" charges more for an electronic version than the paper-back, in "Russian" market eBooks cost 3-4 times less than printed version. For instance, a cheap paperback will cost around £3.00 and the corresponding e-book £0.80 at most, some sought-after hardback - £9.50 and £3.00 respectively.
Considering that population of former USSR is over 300 millions, this market is quite large, and for some strange reason e-ink readers are very popular there :-)

By Lomskij on 2 Feb 2010

Surely Amazon should be able to sell books/e-books at whatever price it wants. Macmillan can charge Amazon whatever they like and Amazon can choose to pass on these costs if they want. If Macmillan wants to shoot itself in the foot with high prices then surely it's not Amazon's problem?

By Mullins2003 on 2 Feb 2010

Looks like Macmillan's executives came from the same business school as the record companies.

By chapelgarth on 2 Feb 2010

Uninformed Drivel!

The price for which a book sells is determined by the fees paid to the author, the cost of management and distribution and the volume sold. It's very unlikely that this equation would always result in the answer $9.99!
Some specialist technical, medical and similar works have very high production costs and low readership and this is reflected in the prices. Similarly often very high advances are paid to major authors or to Politicians or sportpeople and other public figures for memoirs.
The important point is that the cost of eBooks should reflect the lower production and distribution costs -which means they should typically be 20%-40% cheaper than hard copy.

By milliganp on 3 Feb 2010

Uninformed Drivel!

The price for which a book sells is determined by the fees paid to the author, the cost of management and distribution and the volume sold. It's very unlikely that this equation would always result in the answer $9.99!
Some specialist technical, medical and similar works have very high production costs and low readership and this is reflected in the prices. Similarly often very high advances are paid to major authors or to Politicians or sportpeople and other public figures for memoirs.
The important point is that the cost of eBooks should reflect the lower production and distribution costs -which means they should typically be 20%-40% cheaper than hard copy.

By milliganp on 3 Feb 2010