An Economic Argument On E-book Price

[And extraordinarily well constructed and very wittily argued piece about ebook pricing. It is lucid and easy to read, and may be applied to all books.]


An Economic Argument On E-book Price
http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/32641
http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblings/2011/03/20/in-which-competition-is-imperfect-and-we-love-it/
'... I may have a legal monopoly over books by Courtney, but there are decent economic substitutes for books by Courtney. The problem is that (a) there are a small number of really good economic substitutes and (b) all substitutes are imperfect, with some substitutes being more imperfect than others....'
'...So, when someone says that price must tend towards the marginal cost of distribution, you are implicitly saying that authors write indistinguishable crap. And frankly, if I believed I wrote indistinguishable crap, I wouldn't bother writing....'
'...all you have to do is slap words down and put a book up on a Kindle. But it is hard to write a book, and it is a thousand times harder to write a good book. It takes a lot of skill and a lot of talent. Self-publishing doesn't make it any easier to write a good book-it just makes it easier to take a bad book to market....'
'... The book industry has managed to survive against a backdrop where every single excellent book from a century ago is available for free....'




Joseph Harris is Smile Poet
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