However, in other countries, books are a much healthier product.
Many products and services can and should compete, in part, on price, but I believe staunchly that books cannot be commoditized. To preserve the value of books, we must take the finances out of the equation.
He makes these three completely unsupported assertions upon which he bases his entire argument.
Unlike most other products, books are a commodity. The copy of a certain book I buy from Amazon, Booksamillion, Barnes & Noble, from any other bookstore or direct from the publisher is exactly the same (with the possible exception of shelf wear). This can't be said for most other items including the clothes, desk or vacation hotel he specified.
In fact, the author's exact same arguments could be made by sellers of clothes, desks or hotel rooms that they shouldn't be subject to competition or discounting. I'm sure that clothes sellers would say that clothes are even more important than books and therefore clothes stores should be protected.
After reading this it seemed familiar. Then I realized it sounded awfully like Ayn Rand's character Balph Eubanks from Atlas Shrugged.
"It would work very simply," said Balph Eubank. "There should be a law limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies. This would throw the literary market open to new talent, fresh ideas and non-commercial writing. If people were forbidden to buy a million copies of the same piece of trash, they would be forced to buy better books."Limit sales and restrict customer choice in order to allow unsuccessful competitors to stay in the market at the expense of both the consumers and their more successful competition (along with the tax payers because such restrictions are usually one small step from subsidies).
Interesting analysis.
Yes. I do sense that all this back flipping is to “protect” unwanted books written by untalented authors. Or perhaps well written books on unwanted topics.
There’s no awareness on the part of the blogger that keeping prices high reduces the number of books sold. The consumer’s wallet is often not as elastic as the socialists would like.