That's how some people are describing Amazon's U-turn over the
pricing of eBooks.
Poor authors, after all, need all the help they can get. They toil away for years on the Great Novel, living on Baked Beans and this results in Amazon virtually giving their work away.
In the 90's, in the UK, we had the NET Book agreement, which meant that all books had to be sold at the cover price however this was deemed anti-competitive and scrapped.
Which brings me to my point on the Amazon/Mac war. Whilst Amazon should not set the prices for books, and on the surface it seems that Mac forcing Amazon to climb down is a good thing - but we must not forget this was over the pricing of eBooks and whilst Amazon are too cheap, Macmillan's eBook price is too high. I see the publishing industry making the same mistake the music moguls made and that by pricing eBooks too highly the public will feel cheated and hit that download button on the filesharing network. After all eBooks are much less expensive to produce so this saving should go to the consumer. The potential for sales in the digital market is far higher than in the regular book market, so all eBooks should be available at a standard price of around £5 or some such figure. Make them affordable and readers will support the real thing rather than pirated copies.
Not so long ago publishers didn't care about eBooks and would happily allow eVersions of their new books at a knock down price - very few people read eBooks so it didn't matter. But now that eReader sales are soaring, they all of a sudden want to charge almost as much as a new hardback. That's a rip off and people will respond in one way, with piracy.
Piracy isn't an industry-killing problem for publishers yet, and if they can keep prices low enough then there's no reason it should. Macmillan's attempt to bring back a version of the NBA though, while it might result in a few more hardback sales in the short term, can only end in disaster for everyone concerned. That was the problem with the music industry - they were greedy and took the wallop they deserved, that bloodied nose was a long time coming. And look at them now, music is a much fairer price, if not half as creative but then you can't blame downloading for the rise of X-Factor type shows.
The days of the hardcover are numbered in any case - they are expensive to produce and no good for reading on the train. Paperbacks are much more convenient and the price of the average paperback would seem fair when applied to eBooks. Publishers would still make a far greater profit on the digital books since production costs would be minimal. And readers would, I'm sure, be willing to pay this price.
We're at the crossroads now regarding eBooks and publishers and online retailers need to get things together before the pirates move into books in a big way.
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