Notes From The Cave

jkOnTheRun has created a table that compares the prices of eBooks on the New York Times best sellers list being sold by the four major eBook stores: Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Borders. You will see that the prices are all the same, and that is the result of Steve Job’s deal with book publishers to utilize the “agency” pricing model that publishers prefer. The model allows the publishers to set the price of books being sold in stores, and remarkably, all the publishers set their books at the same prices.

We like to think that in the United States we have a free market economy,  but I am not entirely sure we are talking about a real market economy. And I am not talking just about books. Ever wonder how it is that the price of a gallon of gas is the same at almost every gas station? When the prices of products are the same regardless of where it is bought then the people who set those prices can increase them (or decrease them) at will and you and I have not choice but to pay or not buy them.