After several of you complained, the Kindle price, for Create Your Own Economy, has been lowered to $14.27, from $20 something. Maybe someone at Amazon reads the comments at MR (really, I had nothing to do with it).
What other prices would you like changed? Health insurance — how much should that cost? A barrel of oil? Just let them know.
Let’s see…
LOWERED: college education, vocational training, house prices (they still have a long way to go IMHO), taxi fares, high speed Internet access, monthly cell/data plans, “pro” sports events especially soccer, grass fed beef, blueberries, solar energy collectors, natural gas, and sleeping rooms on trains.
RAISED A LOT: blasting your music and talking loudly on cell phones in public spaces, aggressive driving especially tailgating, tween girls dressing like prostitutes and boys who wear low rider pants, cheese, sugar and flour, wheat, soda, high fructose corn syrup, and oil.
Raise the price post hoc!
How about the US price of sugar match the world price, so manufacturers don’t need to substitute high-fructose corn syrup in everything?
Everything should be lowered so recently graduated economics students can afford them. Especially trips to foreign countries and nice food joints.
Exceptions, which have prices that need to be raised:
Carbon, Facebook, fishing, IPods, and speedos
Again with the required mind reading…
I am an American voter. I shouldn’t be charged anything.
Tyler, do you really think that amazon’s pricing model is significantly affected by a few complaints (rhetorical)?
You do a very good pitch job for your books.
How about the US price of sugar match the world price, so manufacturers don’t need to substitute high-fructose corn syrup in everything?
Raise the cost of all carbs, especially refined carbs, including sugar and HFCS. This will also lower health care costs.
Currently … “unavailable at any price” in many other countries.
Check this out: http://www.melvinneo.com/do-life/self-help-book-reader-3/
Babies. Please lower the cost of babies. Introductory costs are minimal, but service and parts are a killer.
“The Kindle price (the pure price of the words, since that’s all that the product is) is only $2.86 cheaper than the hardback. Is that all the physical printing of the book costs?”
“Less.”
The marginal printing cost may be less, but what about distribution? You can’t tell me the cost of managing the inventory of physical books, packing the book once it is ordered and delivering it isn’t at least a few bucks, whereas the marginal cost of distributing the Kindle edition can’t be more than a few cents (including the cut for Sprint’ data service).
Given that it seems that Amazon rather than Tyler is setting the price, it would be interesting to understand what their reasoning is; presumably they have some sort of price discrimination strategy at work – the must see the audience for this book as willing to pay more than the typical target for their benchmark 9.99 for “NY Times Best Sellers.” As one of those who commented that I wouldn’t be buying the book at even the reduced price (14.27) I think they’re wrong.
hmmm…I see an economics book in the making. What if this blog really had the power to lower the price on things. What would the optimal number of items to lower the price of? Would it lower nominal wages? It seems you are only capable of getting the price lowered and not how much it gets lowered. What kind of equilibrium would result?
Oops, not sure where that extraneous “all” came from. Please ignore.
It’s not a price, Tyler, it’s a licensing fee. When I buy your e-book from Amazon I don’t get any rights other than to read it wherever I want. I can’t give it away or sell it to a used bookstore when I’m done with it. As far as I’m concerned, the similarity in price to previous offered licenses or to a hardback book with the same content is not actually that meaningful.
Let me correct: compact discs probably did eventually come back to inflation-adjusted prices for vinyl, but it took like 10 frakkin years. Why so long?
I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the comments today. Gave me a few good chuckles.
To digress, on average, how many “discounted” Kindle purchases does it take to make the purchase of a Kindle worthwhile over buying hardbacks?
Kindle owners made a specific investment so without Kindle book prices being fixed they are likely to be held hostage at some point in the future.
Given the fact you already have a Kindle any discount off the hardcover price makes the Kindle edition more attractive.
People with Kindles self-select into a consumer category of people who read a lot and place a high willingness to pay on books.
If the Kindle is better than a book (cooler, more functional, etc) then people are willing to pay more for the Kindle version of the book (Kindle unit price plus Kindle book prices).
re Kindle: forget the friggin’ kindle. There’s a kindle app for your iphone that makes your phone into a Kindle, and since most of the out-of-copyright classics of Western literature are digitalized and Kindle-ready for rarely more than $1.00, and quite often for absolutely zero, just go put on your phone all the books you wished you had time to read but never did. I got War and Peace that way, and recently found myself on a plane with nothing to read but War and Peace on my iphone. It lasted the entire flight and the returned flight and turned out to be (surprise!) an actually great read.
Of course, for a dollar I probably could have bought a copy in a used bookstore. However, then I wouldn’t have the convenience of having it with me wherever I happened to be.
what prices would I like to see changed?
well, for my own sake I’d like the services I charge for to be much in demand but incredibly expensive but everything I’d like to buy to be really cheap. Otherwise, for the sake of the planet, I’d like to see fossil fuels become insanely expensive.
Is that all the physical printing of the book costs?
It’s pretty good.
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