Amazon is dropping a bunch of ebook prices, in response to the DoJ price-fixing suit filed yesterday against Apple and major publishers. I feel mixed about this myself, because while I use Amazon as the source of many of the books I buy (and other things, too), I don't want it to be a monopoly in bookselling.
On the other hand, the way to fight off that monopoly is not to have a counter-conspiracy setting artificially high prices. #ddtb
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Cut in E-Book Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals
The government’s decision to pursue major publishers on antitrust charges has put Amazon, the nation’s largest bookseller, in a powerful position to decide how much an e-book will cost.
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I fully agree with concerns about amazon being a monopoly.
Interesting point from the article, though. It says that amazon can afford to take a loss on books in order to sell Kindle devices. But my understanding is that they're already taking a loss on Kindles in order to make it up with content.
So if you're losing on content and on device, where are you making your money? Weird.
"We make it up in volume!"
Actually, what's supporting the overall ebook push by Amazon (books and devices) is the rest of the company's margin (music, appliances, all the other stuff where they are taking Best Buy to the cleaners).
Ultimately it's not sustainable, but ultimately I expect that prices in readers and ebooks will drift back up to some degree.
Well said.