[ganeumann]

Scalzi is arguing that the packaging is the important thing, not the contents, which is a funny thing for an author to argue. Because if the content is the important thing, then there is now a system that delivers the exact same thing more efficiently. We, as consumers, should definitely push to benefit from that efficiency with lower prices. To do otherwise would be irrational.

Aside from being a straw-man, Scalzi's just wrong. We pay less for a soda at the fountain than we do in a bottle. That's the comparison that should be made. When you buy Coca-Cola, you are buying more than just the raw ingredients processed. Otherwise you'd be buying Store Brand Cola.

[ghshephard]

Yeah - I thought his examples were actually not very good. The other one is water - you pay a certain amount of money for bottled water (which presumably doesn't have the crappy lead / metals from the pipes, and ideally will store well, and be available in a disaster, etc...) - but you pay less when you fill up your water containers at the store, for water of roughly the same quality.

[UnfalseDesign]

I agree. If Scalzi is saying that the cost of production should not alter the price of the product, then I would ask him why paperback and mass market prints of books are less than hardback books in regards to the price. According to his argument, paperback books and hardcover books should be set at the same price regardless of what it takes to produce them.

[voyou]

The difference in price between hardback and paperback books is not due to the difference in production costs (which is minimal). The difference in price is because it provides a way to capture consumer surplus. Some people are willing to pay $20 to read a given book, and some more people are willing to pay $15. If you charge everyone $15, you get the largest number of sales, but you don't get the extra $5 that some people would have paid. But you can give people an excuse to pay that extra $5 which they would have been happy to pay for the regular version of the product, by providing a slightly superior product at the higher price.

[thedufer]

How often do you see a new hardcover of a book that's been our for more than a year or so? The surplus hardcovers historically capture is of the people who want early access - for the first month or two after publishing, only hardcovers are available. The fact that it is slightly physically superior* is only to make this early-access purchase palatable to the consumer.

If Amazon wants higher-priced ebooks to be more palatable, they should go the hardcover route. Add something to the product to make it seem better. Maybe a preface not found in print versions, maybe features that only work in ebooks - a zoomable version of the map often found at the beginning/end of fantasy books, etc.

*I'm generally of the opinion that they're actually worse - unless you're putting them on display, that's just more bulk to carry around. The number of books I've read enough times for the better binding to matter is easily single digits. And those usually end up given to friends, so I'm buying a new copy every so often anyway.

[smackfu]

Yeah, but ideally, you never want to be in the position of telling people, "oh, this was just price discrimination, it wasn't really worth paying more for."