This post, by Dean Wesley Smith, originally appeared on his site on 9/14/12.
Yup, I am going back into the pricing wars one more time. Why would I do that? Simply put, I’m nuts. And again, things have changed all over the map, so indie pricing of ebooks needs to be talked about.
Again.
All over the news sources right now are articles about the settlements going on with the government and major publishers on the agency pricing issues. Some of it is very complex, most of it will not make much difference at all to most indie publishers.
However, some changes will happen in pricing of ebooks.
Since this is not a legal blog and I will do my best here to not get too deep into the silliness of the boring details. In fact, let me say this. If you are interested in the details of all the legal aspects of the pricing lawsuits, followThePassiveVoice.com. He does wonderful takes with great opinions on the different aspects of the battles.
My opinion is pretty much with other people who have followed these lawsuits. Pricing for customers of electronic books will go up as this settles out over the next few years. Even with stores discounting some titles, ebook prices really can’t do anything else but go up.
There are a number of good sides of this for writers.
First, it means authors who are publishing through traditional publishers will get more money per sale because publishers will make more money from increased prices. And they do pass on, sometimes, a tiny fraction of that amount.
Second, if indie publishers are smart, they will bring their prices up slightly, but stay under the traditional discounting ranges. I will talk about this before, but it will make us all more money.
Some Basics
Read the rest of the post on Dean Wesley Smith’s site.