From this piece on the “evil” of 99 cent e-Book pricing:
But to pull back from the misanthropy, the point is this: self-published authors game the system. You set your e-book price at $0.99, get a hundred friends to buy it in a short window of time, and shoot into the best-seller list where sales breed sales, and Terry Gross has only a momentary impact.
My gut reaction is that this is BS. That it cheapens the art of writing. That . . . and I’m probably old and out of touch with pop culture. And for those reasons I never wanted to get involved in this whole e-book thing. Not. At. All.
Is it unreasonable to actually prefer a higher money cost for the same product, or even a nominally inferior one? The University of Rochester would seem to think otherwise. As would buyers of designer clothing, Lenovo laptops, and the Cadillac Escalade.
The author is not kidding when he says that he is no “economics expert.”
FYI, Terry Gross has a daily interview show on Philadelphia’s NPR station, WHYY. She is amusing when she interviews visiting artists, but is stupid when interviewing visiting or local liberals. One time she had Ed Rendell on the program, and treated him like the Pillsbury Doughboy. Maybe she thought he was, taking up all that space.
Like you, Wintercow, I spend some time listening to or reading the words of idiots, but thank goodness I have been spared Maureen Dowd since the last cruise.