Amazon Bites The Hand That Feeds It

Who sets prices for books?

It would appear that Amazon, the behemoth vendor, has control over what you'll pay for your e-book.

The Kindle is theirs, and theirs alone. In effect, Amazon holds a monopoly on e-books, and as the sole owner, they have a great deal to say about pricing and what they think the market will bear.

Arnold Nourry of Hachette Books sees the death of the hardback at Amazon's hands. The world's biggest bookstore, as they once styled themselves, could kill off the very product that launched it to success.

Amazon never asked the big publishing houses what price structure should be put in place for e-books. $9.99 is more than a reflection of the savings realized in non-paper production. The people who work for the publisher still have to be paid their usual salaries, the book still must be edited and type-set, and the author still must be given an advance, which is growing ever smaller.

With Sony coming on-board and iPhone teaming up with Barnes & Noble to deliver books to reading devices, a publisher can only expect to see the price of books go down even further as the competitors do battle to win market share.

What can the publishing house do to cut costs with the decline in income that's expected? Stop producing expensive hardbound books, lay off the printers and mothball the presses, and there's expenses slashed.

The publishing houses aren't the only ones to see an effect if e-books take over the reading world. Building contractors won't have to construct elaborate panelled libraries in the future. There won't be any books and there won't be any need for elegant shelves and fine joinery. The public library will be a website for downloading and the librarian will become as extinct as the dinosaurs.