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Barnes and Noble Price Gouging on Neverwinters Success
zentucknor
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild Users Posts: 0 Arc User
Well it seems no good chance to price gouge the public can go undone. I have been a loyal Nook user since the release of the original Nook. That is until today...
With the release of Neverwinter I wanted to delve into the fiction a bit and so got book 1 of the Neverwinter saga. Enjoyed the book and was looking forward to book 2. That is I was until I saw book 2 was DOUBLE the beook price of book 1 and 3, with book 4 also double priced.
I checked with Amazon and they still have all four books priced at the same point as each other, no vairnce and all lower priced.
I just finished a chat with the people at Bn.com
Now think about that timing for a moment, this is around the same time frame people started to get hyped about Neverwinter coming into any form of beta. Interest in the game spikes and suddenly Barnes and Noble feels to need to hike the price of an older book title by double and then only two of the 4 books in the series.
This is seriously a bad move by them. The cost for an ebook is a single fixed rate at creation and after that single rate there is ZERO cost on future sales, making them clear profit. There is no reprint cost, or shipping or any other cost to justify a price hike on a title once it hits ebook.
Needless to say I will be picking up a simple tablet today so I can use my BN library and still start using Amazon from here on...
With the release of Neverwinter I wanted to delve into the fiction a bit and so got book 1 of the Neverwinter saga. Enjoyed the book and was looking forward to book 2. That is I was until I saw book 2 was DOUBLE the beook price of book 1 and 3, with book 4 also double priced.
I checked with Amazon and they still have all four books priced at the same point as each other, no vairnce and all lower priced.
I just finished a chat with the people at Bn.com
Nicky: I undersstand that you are concerned with the pricing of the item. Is that correct?
Edward: yes
Nicky: Give me a moment while I look into the issue.
Edward: thank you
Nicky: May I have the ISBN mumber of the particular book?
Edward: just a sec
Edward: ISBN-13: 9780786959396
Nicky: Thank you for assisting us.
Nicky: I see that the price of the item is $15.37. Earlier it was $7.59.
Edward: Right, is that higher price now the price, a price hike on the book?
Nicky: Yes, it is decided by the separate department.
Edward: Okay so the price has been hiked on an old title for no apparent reason?
Nicky: This rated is effective from 11/11/2012 3:29:04 AM.
Nicky: It depends on many factors along with the market concerns.
Now think about that timing for a moment, this is around the same time frame people started to get hyped about Neverwinter coming into any form of beta. Interest in the game spikes and suddenly Barnes and Noble feels to need to hike the price of an older book title by double and then only two of the 4 books in the series.
This is seriously a bad move by them. The cost for an ebook is a single fixed rate at creation and after that single rate there is ZERO cost on future sales, making them clear profit. There is no reprint cost, or shipping or any other cost to justify a price hike on a title once it hits ebook.
Needless to say I will be picking up a simple tablet today so I can use my BN library and still start using Amazon from here on...
Ever ask a halfling to watch over your stuff while you visit the privy? Was it there when you returned?
Friar Kalien of Torm
Post edited by zentucknor on
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Comments
I still buy my books in paper.
On book 7 of the Legend of Drizzt series atm. My brother warned me Neverwinter had spoilers (he's read all that are out now, 23? 24? I can't remember), but I figured I'd try the game anyway and am in love. Sadly, Idk if I'll ever finish the books now, haha!
Can't in any way confirm your suspicions, but still you're doing the right thing by voting with your wallet.
A stretch I will grant but is it not odd that this only seems to happen when Neverwinter begins to grow. Also the stretch is less than you might believe when you realize this is the third time I have seen this happen in the last couple of years. They did this to a couple of the Game of Thrones books right after the TV series season one ended. They also did this to a few Wheel of Times books right before the release date for the final book.
Look I am all for a company making a profit but when they are the ONLY ebook publishing hiking the price that begs a question real quick by itself. In fact hiking an ebook price makes no sense. I mean you cannot argue supply and demand. After the initial book is created the supply is infinite at NO additional cost, it's just a file copy.
So can I "prove" they gouged specifically due to the game? No. However the history and circumstances give a lot of reasons to speculate and while it might be a stretch it is not a big or unfounded one.
How are you calling Neverwinter a "success"? Game isn't even released yet, not is it even 90 days old.
Call it a success in 1 year.
Ummmm lets see packed servers seeing the Inferno mount text every 30 secs or so, over 200 instances of protectors enclave just on dragon, media gushing over it.....I just don't see how anyone could not call it a success, of course you have that small contingent on these forums that is really campaigning for the game not to be a success, looks like they are going to be let down.
I am not sure it is making all these waves in mainstream media. It's doing fine for the moment (hell a lot better than most titles launched in the last 12 months) but I doubt that pricing hike is related. Though I wouldn't put the thought completely aside, seen how the pricing works in the ebook industry
To illustrate my point: I can buy a paperback of any Black Library book on Amazon or Play.com for half of what the ebook sells on the TBL website...
I used to work at a B&N and it was fun to see them bump prices for things that were out, but the fact of the matter is the price change for the Nevewinter books happened November last year. Was the game even in CBT at that time?
I've been reading ebooks since my Palm Zire, free as a bird.
Shame, I just deleted a d&d folder with over 5 gb of stuff in it.
Careful what you say in a public forum....
What you have is a CS rep telling you the effective date of the whacked-out price and you assigning some phantom motive and invented coincidence. Spend your money where you think the merchant deserves it and don't pay more than it's worth, but try not to invent malicious motive where a plain old SNAFU is most likely to blame. In this case you probably have a badly coded MSRP for the eBook (probably based on the hardcover) with a blanket discount applied. There's almost 0 chance this pricing error has anything to do with this video game.
Thanks in advance
I am currently on hold right now with corporate, they gave me the number and asked me to call them to shut me in the story when they noticed other people starting to ask questions. :-) I am now on a quest for this to be used in an article for the publication I work for on digital media and pricing structures.
I also still buy my books in the paper format, although I do have a generic tablet. I must admit ... and I really don't remember just where I noted this, although it could well have been Barnes and Noble, that the prices, in many cases, was very close to the paper format, further discouraging me from going the electronic route. I will note that I am MAJOR book buyer ( it is the norm for me to drop anywhere from $200 to $700 in a given purchase); and most of those purchases are from Barnes and Noble for a number of reasons.
Lottie
As an ex employee I hope you have the membership if your dropping that kind of money.
Buy the book from another site and put it on your nook.
Now suddenly they have no way of know past pricing. Odd because the store, the online chat and even the person I was speaking with at first said they did. Additionally I was told that all pricing was controlled by the publisher and that the books in question must be bigger than the others in the series. When I pointed out that the books in questions were the same size and in one case smaller she became quite agitated and told me to speak with another corporate number, briskly read me the number and hung up.
Calls to that number resulted in 10 different transfers before I got a voice mail.
Next I called Wizards of the Coast, the listed publisher of the book. Took a few phone tags to get anyone with a clue but it was explained to me that upon release they give an MSRP for the books epub initial sale but after a year or so the pricing falls to the seller.
No one BTW has still explained why ONLY BN has the price hikes.
ABSOLUTELY! It's not quite as good as it used to be, but still extremely useful. I used to laugh at Borders' brag that their membership program was better because it was free. NUH UH! Not when you spend the kind of money that I do every two or three months.
Lottie