The single dollar I tip a bartender for getting me a glass of water doesn't actually cover their labor costs for being there to serve me The understanding is that I am being subsidized by the person who orders 4 or 5 overpriced mixed drinks, because they probably have more money
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Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
And when you attack the underpinnings of these systems as being "irrational" ("Why should I have to tip based on a % of the bill?") you have a point but you aren't seeing the big picture of why that system exists and how if you remove it you gotta replace it
2 replies 3 retweets 36 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
Like, publishers are right that, regardless of the merits of ebooks to the consumer, ebooks have been very damaging to the industry in terms of price point People *perceive* the cost of an author's time and labor as being tied up in the physical book
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Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
Side note: this right here is why so many of the (then) big 6 teamed up/collided against Amazon ~10 years ago. They were deliberately selling ebooks at prices deemed too low by the industry to move kindles.
3 replies 2 retweets 8 likes -
Replying to @BeccaTheWitz @lawnerdbarak and
Right, and this reveals the nature of the play, and why calling the Big 6 trad publishers the "capitalists" in this equation misses the point Amazon could have sold the Kindle at a loss, as a loss leader to make money on expensive ebooks
1 reply 2 retweets 13 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BeccaTheWitz and
They went the exact opposite direction They demanded the ebooks be cheap, so that they could move Kindles They don't actually care about the content, the delivery mechanism is the product, on which they intend to make a profit
2 replies 3 retweets 22 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BeccaTheWitz and
They are fully profiting on people's growing perception that the true "service providers" are Big Tech and there's just this amorphous ocean of "content" out there that you pay Big Tech to give you access to and help you navigate
1 reply 4 retweets 27 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @BeccaTheWitz and
People don't seem to feel "ripped off" at the price of a Kindle, or an iPhone But they *absolutely* feel ripped off if they have to pay for the digital files they use those devices to consume Even though that "content" is the only reason those devices are worth anything
3 replies 11 retweets 38 likes -
Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
Ironically, people don’t realize there’s labor involved - especially then! - in creating the ebook files. And Amazon doesn’t use the standard .epub
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Replying to @BeccaTheWitz @arthur_affect and
So publishers’ production teams were configuring 3 different formats: kindle, epub, and print.
1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
Man ebook aficionados are, I gotta say, the worst Like they get so so pissy about this -- "I consider it a bedrock principle that an ebook should AT MOST be 50% of the hardcover price, after all there's *no physical book*"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @BeccaTheWitz and
And then they get all mad and leave scathing reviews when the file they get is riddled with typos and glitches, even though they just said that in their opinion ebook publishing is just a matter of uploading a text file and can be and should be done by unpaid trained monkeys
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Replying to @arthur_affect @lawnerdbarak and
People don’t understand 1) how publishing works as a business; 2) how the files are transmitted; and 3) they’re buying a *license* to use the file, not the file itself.
1 reply 0 retweets 5 likes - Show replies
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