<story><title>Big, bad Amazon</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/market-power?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/bigbadamazon</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s an interesting narrative, but technology renders the cost of reproduction irrelevant. Which is different from saying it&amp;#x27;s relevant that it&amp;#x27;s extremely cheap.&lt;p&gt;Look at an area that &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap. I had to censor the ads on a HuffPo article before printing and sending it to someone the other day. That&amp;#x27;s journalism circa 2014 where there is no money to pay for class.&lt;p&gt;Is that what we want to have happen to books too? Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian? Because that&amp;#x27;s the road Amazon is taking us down, along with all the other companies who make money from distributing rather than creating content.</text></item><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>I see the previous submission[1] to Hacker News of Matthew Yglesias&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Vox&lt;/i&gt; essay, &amp;quot;Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers,&amp;quot;[2] didn&amp;#x27;t get much discussion here, but I think the essay supplements the arguments in the &lt;i&gt;Economist&lt;/i&gt; blog post kindly submitted here very nicely from the author&amp;#x27;s side. (The &lt;i&gt;Economist&lt;/i&gt; post mostly argues from the reader&amp;#x27;s side.) I still have plenty to read, and I don&amp;#x27;t find that Hachette or the other people whining about Amazon are doing as much as Amazon is to provide you and me with more to read at a better price than ever before. As Yglesias writes, &amp;quot;When all is said and done, the argument between Amazon and book publishers is over the rather banal question of price. Amazon&amp;#x27;s view is that since &amp;#x27;printing&amp;#x27; an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers&amp;#x27; view is that since &amp;#x27;printing&amp;#x27; an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=8493736&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopoly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;7016827&amp;#x2F;amazon-hachette-monopo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mseebach</author><text>&amp;gt; Look at an area that &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap.&lt;p&gt;Ironically, people used the exact same argument against the printing press and pretty much every single development in publishing. Remember when the gramophone destroyed the live performance? When TV killed theatre?&lt;p&gt;All of those developments lowered the price of production and&amp;#x2F;or distribution radically, and allowed the production of new cheap crap, but did not kill the incumbent as predicted.&lt;p&gt;The same is true today. Before the Internet, you would probably be subscribing to a newspaper, probably at quite high expense. If you limited yourself to free reading, you would only get crap - as true then as now.&lt;p&gt;If the traditional newspaper is largely irrelevant, there&amp;#x27;s a large and healthy selection of paid-for journalism out there, just get out your wallet. I&amp;#x27;m a fan of The Economist, but that&amp;#x27;s far from the only selection.</text></comment>
<story><title>Big, bad Amazon</title><url>http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/10/market-power?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/bigbadamazon</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s an interesting narrative, but technology renders the cost of reproduction irrelevant. Which is different from saying it&amp;#x27;s relevant that it&amp;#x27;s extremely cheap.&lt;p&gt;Look at an area that &amp;quot;cheap&amp;quot; has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap. I had to censor the ads on a HuffPo article before printing and sending it to someone the other day. That&amp;#x27;s journalism circa 2014 where there is no money to pay for class.&lt;p&gt;Is that what we want to have happen to books too? Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian? Because that&amp;#x27;s the road Amazon is taking us down, along with all the other companies who make money from distributing rather than creating content.</text></item><item><author>tokenadult</author><text>I see the previous submission[1] to Hacker News of Matthew Yglesias&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;Vox&lt;/i&gt; essay, &amp;quot;Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers,&amp;quot;[2] didn&amp;#x27;t get much discussion here, but I think the essay supplements the arguments in the &lt;i&gt;Economist&lt;/i&gt; blog post kindly submitted here very nicely from the author&amp;#x27;s side. (The &lt;i&gt;Economist&lt;/i&gt; post mostly argues from the reader&amp;#x27;s side.) I still have plenty to read, and I don&amp;#x27;t find that Hachette or the other people whining about Amazon are doing as much as Amazon is to provide you and me with more to read at a better price than ever before. As Yglesias writes, &amp;quot;When all is said and done, the argument between Amazon and book publishers is over the rather banal question of price. Amazon&amp;#x27;s view is that since &amp;#x27;printing&amp;#x27; an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers&amp;#x27; view is that since &amp;#x27;printing&amp;#x27; an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=8493736&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopoly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.vox.com&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;7016827&amp;#x2F;amazon-hachette-monopo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheCraiggers</author><text>&amp;gt;Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian?&lt;p&gt;I feel that is a silly premise. I was unable to find any cost breakdowns of how much it costs to produce a dead-tree $8 US paperback, but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be surprised if manufacturing &amp;amp; shipping is at least $4 of that cost. Lets just assume that after everyone else takes their cut, the publisher gets $2.&lt;p&gt;Now, with ebooks, you don&amp;#x27;t have that $4 manufacturing cost. No grinding up tree pulp, etc. No shipping boxes of heavy hard-cover books to stores. If publishers wanted to, they could sell ebooks directly from their own online storefront for $2 and, for the purposes of this argument, make the exact same amount of money.&lt;p&gt;Your grim future only happens if people stop seeing a $2 book as worth the money. Like mobile games- developers found out that even a $2 purchase price is too high a barrier of entry for many people, and free, ad supported games could make more money. If anything, cheaper purchase prices of books would help prevent this. Deciding between a free, ad-supported ebook or paying $8 for the same thing is a hell of a lot easier decision than deciding between free-with-ads or spending $2.</text></comment>