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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
by 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 agoWell, 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.
- protomyth 12y agoYou read quite a lot into that sentence. Many of those people bought nothing because Amazon doesn't have what they wanted.