Sorry you’re unable to connect the obvious dots. When the general public start to understand that it’s possible to acquire ebooks without paying the inflated prices of the big publishers, who have already been caught engaging in price-fixing, it will cut into their profits. They may figure out what the music industry did, and adopt an ebook version of the 99¢/song model. As I’ve already said, once you set book prices below the $5 mark, you get the impulse buys, and end up selling more books.
The prices being charged are ridiculous, when you consider that the costs for the latest Stephen King novel ebook to print it, store it, ship it, and buying back remainders, is right about $0.00. Actual ebook price? $15.
Now I remember why I don’t bother to reply to you. You’re a conversational black hole when it comes to back and forth with folks.
I connect the dots just fine. It just wasn’t the f’ing question I asked. That was the question I wanted answered, not your special crusade. Thanks, Homer.
If you think ebooks are ever going to uniformly be $5, you’re high. Amazon had got sued by the publishing industry conglomerates for trying to price them at twice that, $10, even if it took a short term loss to do so. No one is going to offer current releases for $5 or less as a matter of course. The industry has matured on price point, it is just one that you don’t like. I’m perfectly happy with $10 for new books.
Your inability to recognize an answer, doesn’t alter the fact that it’s an answer. And the other publishers didn’t sue Amazon. They, in fact were the ones who got slapped with an antitrust suit for trying to coerce Amazon to come off their $9.99 price model.
You say that like it’s a good thing. Actually what happened is that Amazon is now prevented from charging lower prices, if the publisher wants them jacked up. And the consumer gets screwed.
This is a forum. If you want private communication, use email.
I do enjoy my kindle. Despite its age, it still displays works just fine. As for “paranoia”, did you read the title at the top of the page?
Not in the slightest. My point is that your $5 dream ebooks went in the opposite direction. We are further from that then ever.
As to it being a forum, sure, but you didn’t answer the question that I asked and then got righteously indignant about it when I pointed it out. If you’re going to interject yourself, at least do it topically.
Did you read the actual article or at least the quote.
Cory is a bit hyperbolic with his headlines. The users data is still there and readable. What the update did was for whatever reason not automatically recognize the books. You can manually go add them back in. It’s a PITA and shouldn’t happen in the first place but a far cry from ‘depriving’ them of their ebooks.
DRM schemes are usually created by a different company and sold to gullible CEOs of music, video and ebook publishers. There’s even more hassle for them than for the users, in addition to what they paid for the DRM.
Announcing that the DRM doesn’t work regardless, and that it’s common sense practice for paying users to strip it out, will encourage companies to not bother with DRM.
Oh i didn’t say it wasn’t crappy, just not ‘deprived’. On reading the full description it sounds a lot more like a bog standard programming oops vs. anything deliberate.
They already know that everyone who wants to strip DRM can do so. It is common knowledge at Amazon and Google (I’ve spoken to folks there). You can rip bluray disks as well but they still encrypt them.
The other 99.9% of their users won’t and as long as the DRM is there, it is technically illegal to remove it, which they can leverage if necessary. Change the laws to make it legal to strip if you actually want to make a difference.
Only because there are a few players, and they’re basically colluding with each other to keep prices high. If the government got serious about stopping this, and smaller startups could get in the game, we’d have a situation more like the UK, where, when you equalize prices based on hardcover costs, most ebooks are around the $5 price point. The vast majority of books sold are in the £1 to £2 range, and practically nothing sells at over £5.
Not a whole lot, but @Glaurung didn’t specify this was the place to do any announcing.
I believe the point was simply that anyone who strips DRM shouldn’t be coy about it, but rather, loud and proud. A few years of that, and it might be enough to shift opinion among those who are in a position to make a difference.
Never be under the illusion that you “own” anything that you had to click a license to access. The whole POINT of a license is that you have paid for a lesser set of rights than owners have. And do not confuse “own” with “possess.” To own is to have the legal right of permanent possession. And don’t confuse the DRM with which copyright holders attempt to enforce their contracts with the actual, awful terms in those contracts, because that is only one method. Border searches, warrants and other invasive methods are also at their disposal, and don’t think that copyright trolls won’t stoop to them or that the legal system won’t enable them.
Every Amazon Kindle book in the UK that is a mainstream published book seems to be selling for £6 to £10 when I look. I buy Amazon UK kindle books as well (and remove the DRM) to put on my US kindle as a regular thing. This puts their prices largely in line with what US published titles are charging if you convert to USD.
That’s because you seem to only be buying from Amazon, but in the UK, there are a lot more independent sellers, and more opportunity to find bargains. As for that pricing data…
Your two year old data is…well…actually…almost 2 1/2 years old (and older):
and
It is 2016 and the market has continued to shift in the last three years. One pop news of the day article of 2013 data is the entirety of your argument?
And there still isn’t any evidence in this (by Internet standards) ancient news article that the glut of one and two pound books isn’t the equivalent of the $1 kindle books which are, often, of dreadfully low and self-published quality.
So, no, I don’t believe you that most UK ebooks that people buy, at least from any mainstream publisher, are under five pounds.
