5 ms·

I mean, they're not quite commodities. But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books. Books are subject to competition from other books, which cau

by cwyers 12y ago

I mean, they're not quite commodities. But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books. Books are subject to competition from other books, which causes price pressures, just like most goods.

protomyth 12y ago
"But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books" When the next book in a series arrives, there is no substitute. I would love to have seen someone trying to tell a Harry Potter reader that this other book is a substitute.
- dublinben 12y ago
  >When the next book in a series arrives, there is no substitute. This is only because publishers enjoy an artificial monopoly on the production of specific works thanks to copyright. Without these limits, you would see a free market in competing editions of the same books, such as exists for books in the public domain. The Iliad: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the%20iliad&sprefix=the+iliad%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Athe%20iliad http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D... Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_asi_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ahuckleberry+finn&keywords=huckleberry+finn&ie=UTF8&qid=1401302390 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_asi_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ahuckle...
  - protomyth 12y ago
    > This is only because publishers enjoy an artificial monopoly on the production of specific works thanks to copyright. Without these limits, you would see a free market in competing editions of the same books, such as exists for books in the public domain. No, I wouldn't because J. K. Rowling would have never wrote it since she couldn't make a living at it and wasn't independently wealthy.
    - milkshakes 12y ago
      there are other motivations besides getting paid cf. open source, fan fiction, wikipedia
      - vertex-four 12y ago
        The majority of open source software is written so that somebody can make money off it. It just happens that what they're making money off of isn't the software itself, the software is a means to an end. Have you ever found fan fiction that spanned upwards of three hundred pages, was actually well written, and was not written for profit?
        jessaustin 12y ago
        http://hpmor.com/ http://hpmor.com/ http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/ http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
      - protomyth 12y ago
        Allowing people to make money from what they are good at seems to work best. Ask authors about having to cram writing into little blocks of time outside of a job that they would rather not be doing. Other motivations are fine, but people got to survive. Looking a Linux, it seems most commits are by people getting paid.
        moron4hire 12y ago
        The extremely restrictive version of copyright that we have today is not necessary to get authors paid. Far, far from it.
        chrismcb 12y ago
        Other than length of time (which is way too long), how is today's copyright extremely restrictive? and how can it be made less restrictive and still remain a copyright?
- cwyers 12y ago
  So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE EXAMPLE is a rebuttal? And again, books are absolutely not commodities. Nobody is saying there's no difference between the preference for Harry Potter versus Percy Jackson or what have you. But Percy Jackson is certainly a close substitute for Harry Potter, so if the price difference between them is great enough, some readers will choose to read Percy Jackson instead of Harry Potter, and the number of readers for which this is true grows as the price difference does. This is also true if the supply of Harry Potter books is restricted. (This is the principle that makes small airport bookstores work, incidentally -- given the constrained supply of books available for purchase, airport book stores stock the most popular titles they can and figure that people will substitute their most preferred book that's available for the book they would purchase if the store carried a larger selection. And often enough, they do.) And this is true for most goods. Android phones and iPhones are close substitutes for each other -- if you want one, that's the one you want, but if the price difference gets high enough, you'll go to the close substitute, and people vary in their level of price sensitivity. If the price of corn tortillas gets high enough, you'll start eating flour tortillas. And so on and so forth. This is pretty basic economics here.
  - protomyth 12y ago
    > So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE EXAMPLE is a rebuttal? I don't believe it is true much of the time. Maybe for technical books, but even then it is not because authors matter. Picking between authors you like or have heard good things about is one thing, but they are not interchangeable. If I am waiting for the next in a series and I go to Amazon and they pull this crap then I will have to go elsewhere. The book is more important that a seller. If I want a certain painters art on my wall, I buy that print, not a "well Amazon didn't have that so I'll get a Fred".
    - cwyers 12y ago
      Well, look, from Hachette's own statement: "It is good to see Amazon acknowledge that its business decisions significantly affect authors’ lives." Because when people aren't finding these books available through Amazon, or are finding them at a higher markup than other books, some of them aren't going to Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million or to Actual Physical Bookstore to get them. Now, some of these missed purchase opportunities may simply be books that aren't sold at all, but some of them are going to be consumers buying other books. Because books are close substitutes for other books.

by cwyers 12y ago

protomyth 12y ago

"But there's no shortage of close substitutes for most books" When the next book in a series arrives, there is no substitute. I would love to have seen someone trying to tell a Harry Potter reader that this other book is a substitute.

dublinben 12y ago
>When the next book in a series arrives, there is no substitute. This is only because publishers enjoy an artificial monopoly on the production of specific works thanks to copyright. Without these limits, you would see a free market in competing editions of the same books, such as exists for books in the public domain. The Iliad: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the%20iliad&sprefix=the+iliad%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Athe%20iliad http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3D... Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_asi_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ahuckleberry+finn&keywords=huckleberry+finn&ie=UTF8&qid=1401302390 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_asi_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ahuckle...
- protomyth 12y ago
  > This is only because publishers enjoy an artificial monopoly on the production of specific works thanks to copyright. Without these limits, you would see a free market in competing editions of the same books, such as exists for books in the public domain. No, I wouldn't because J. K. Rowling would have never wrote it since she couldn't make a living at it and wasn't independently wealthy.
  - milkshakes 12y ago
    there are other motivations besides getting paid cf. open source, fan fiction, wikipedia
    - vertex-four 12y ago
      The majority of open source software is written so that somebody can make money off it. It just happens that what they're making money off of isn't the software itself, the software is a means to an end. Have you ever found fan fiction that spanned upwards of three hundred pages, was actually well written, and was not written for profit?
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        http://hpmor.com/ http://hpmor.com/ http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/ http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/1-1/
    - protomyth 12y ago
      Allowing people to make money from what they are good at seems to work best. Ask authors about having to cram writing into little blocks of time outside of a job that they would rather not be doing. Other motivations are fine, but people got to survive. Looking a Linux, it seems most commits are by people getting paid.
      - moron4hire 12y ago
        The extremely restrictive version of copyright that we have today is not necessary to get authors paid. Far, far from it.
        chrismcb 12y ago
        Other than length of time (which is way too long), how is today's copyright extremely restrictive? and how can it be made less restrictive and still remain a copyright?
cwyers 12y ago
So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE EXAMPLE is a rebuttal? And again, books are absolutely not commodities. Nobody is saying there's no difference between the preference for Harry Potter versus Percy Jackson or what have you. But Percy Jackson is certainly a close substitute for Harry Potter, so if the price difference between them is great enough, some readers will choose to read Percy Jackson instead of Harry Potter, and the number of readers for which this is true grows as the price difference does. This is also true if the supply of Harry Potter books is restricted. (This is the principle that makes small airport bookstores work, incidentally -- given the constrained supply of books available for purchase, airport book stores stock the most popular titles they can and figure that people will substitute their most preferred book that's available for the book they would purchase if the store carried a larger selection. And often enough, they do.) And this is true for most goods. Android phones and iPhones are close substitutes for each other -- if you want one, that's the one you want, but if the price difference gets high enough, you'll go to the close substitute, and people vary in their level of price sensitivity. If the price of corn tortillas gets high enough, you'll start eating flour tortillas. And so on and so forth. This is pretty basic economics here.
- protomyth 12y ago
  > So, lemme ask you a question. When you see a statement that something is true MOST of the time, what exactly possesses you to think that citing ONE EXAMPLE is a rebuttal? I don't believe it is true much of the time. Maybe for technical books, but even then it is not because authors matter. Picking between authors you like or have heard good things about is one thing, but they are not interchangeable. If I am waiting for the next in a series and I go to Amazon and they pull this crap then I will have to go elsewhere. The book is more important that a seller. If I want a certain painters art on my wall, I buy that print, not a "well Amazon didn't have that so I'll get a Fred".
  - cwyers 12y ago
    Well, look, from Hachette's own statement: "It is good to see Amazon acknowledge that its business decisions significantly affect authors’ lives." Because when people aren't finding these books available through Amazon, or are finding them at a higher markup than other books, some of them aren't going to Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million or to Actual Physical Bookstore to get them. Now, some of these missed purchase opportunities may simply be books that aren't sold at all, but some of them are going to be consumers buying other books. Because books are close substitutes for other books.