Get Up, Stand Up

The reactions to the new Agency Pricing thing have been great.  Most people are annoyed enough to talk about doing something about it, be it complaining to the publisher, switching completely to indies or going back to the libraries and second hand shops.  I know that in the end most of us will suck it up and accept it but these publishers have done themselves a long term disservice.  Although their plan seems to include diminishing the lure of Ebooks in general, they have made themselves come across as greedy.  A lot of people are noting who these publishers are and many of them are planning on buying secondhand books rather than a new paperback/hardcover so the publisher won't benefit. 

Amazon has made it easier to pinpoint the culprits by stating those books have their "Price set by publisher" and adding the new price into a different column, i.e. not Amazon's price column anymore.  This was the perfect reaction by Amazon in my opinion.  Without much fuss, they have given their customers an opportunity to be mad at the publishers and it is now much easier to tell which books are complying with Agency Pricing and which lights in the darkness are not.  I've heard a lot of indies mention an influx of sales this weekend.  That could be accounted to the long weekend but maybe it isn't.  Maybe the cheaper, non-big publishing houses and indies are getting the business the others would have received this weekend had they been a bit more sensible on the pricing issue.

People are going to keep buying Ebooks, particularly with so many different options on the market in terms of Ereaders.  We haven't all spent a big chunk of cash upfront to pay more for an Ebook than a hard copy.  So books will be bought and fortunately, there are plenty of people more than willing to sell books for a reasonable price.  The rise of Ebooks is unlikely to be squashed this time, both readers and writers have invested too much time and money to scurry back under a rock.  The Big Six have taken themselves out of the game momentarily but I'm thinking that they are thinking too much of themselves.  They might be good at sniffing out the occasional commercial success but they have lost touch with the most important people, the readers.  Big mistake.