As I understand it, this is dead simple to understand -- if you look at it from the correct angle, which is that of a corporate vice-president in charge of publishing dead trees.
Ebook publishing arms were set up as effectively parallel imprints within publishing groups, taking up the ebook rights to books their book arms had bought, and turning them into ebooks. This meant they had a parallel management hierarchy to the traditional publishing arm, and were in theory semi-independent.
The execs in charge of the p-book arms took one look at this situation and shat a brick: "what's to stop the e-book publisher from cannibalizing our market by selling the product for $2.50?" they asked.
And to answer the question: they went upstairs to the boardroom (as high as they could get in what is essentially a multinational media corporation with its fingers into newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and dog toys) and screamed "you gotta help us! Our scheming rivals in division Q are going to destroy our market and drop your profits in the shitter unless you put a floor under their pricing!"
And lo, verily, it is decreed at most publishers that the ebook arm can't publish and sell books for less than 80% of the price of the cheapest paper edition of the same book. Because the folks making the decision wouldn't know an ebook from an elephant unless one sat on their head but they understand "cannibalize our market" real good. (Or think they do.)
(Yes, there are exceptions. They're slowly getting less rare.)
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Date: 15 Jan 2009 10:35 am (UTC)As I understand it, this is dead simple to understand -- if you look at it from the correct angle, which is that of a corporate vice-president in charge of publishing dead trees.
Ebook publishing arms were set up as effectively parallel imprints within publishing groups, taking up the ebook rights to books their book arms had bought, and turning them into ebooks. This meant they had a parallel management hierarchy to the traditional publishing arm, and were in theory semi-independent.
The execs in charge of the p-book arms took one look at this situation and shat a brick: "what's to stop the e-book publisher from cannibalizing our market by selling the product for $2.50?" they asked.
And to answer the question: they went upstairs to the boardroom (as high as they could get in what is essentially a multinational media corporation with its fingers into newspapers, magazines, TV stations, and dog toys) and screamed "you gotta help us! Our scheming rivals in division Q are going to destroy our market and drop your profits in the shitter unless you put a floor under their pricing!"
And lo, verily, it is decreed at most publishers that the ebook arm can't publish and sell books for less than 80% of the price of the cheapest paper edition of the same book. Because the folks making the decision wouldn't know an ebook from an elephant unless one sat on their head but they understand "cannibalize our market" real good. (Or think they do.)
(Yes, there are exceptions. They're slowly getting less rare.)