Michael A. Stackpole Quotes

Higher ebook prices don't benefit me, booksellers or readers, and that means something is really wrong.

Increasingly prices are set by sellers to raise their prices without a loss of sales sufficient to wipe out the gain.

In the U.S., PC-makers have no incentive to lower prices because it kills their profit margins. They keep adding new features like high-end retina displays and faster processors to justify their high prices.

With less competition to fear, companies are emboldened to raise their mark-ups and profits. That lifts share prices and thus the wealth of already wealthy shareholders.

People have bad things to say about publishers, but I think they still have services, and I want to see what they are. And if they end up not being any good, I don't have to keep using them.

When I entered the market, I was rejected because the elite say that you have to sell things at a certain price point. My position was that the consumer is smarter than that. Who cares if it's $200, not $2,000?

I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.

They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.

What is “destructive competition” for producers is a bargain bonanza for consumers.

The tell the regulators that they’re cost cutting, and then they tell their customers they have to increase their prices after the deal is done.

When the Internet first appeared, this heated debate developed among economists. One side said the Internet will make it easier for companies to price-discriminate, and it'll be fabulously profitable.

When the government mandates that everyone must buy a product, its sellers can, and will, increase its price, potentially without limit.

When the price of a drug rises, it becomes profitable and the target of new competition.

The price of an e-book is a lot less than the price that we're charging for a hardcover book. It's about the same as we charge for a paperback. And that means a different revenue stream.

Unfortunately for me, most of the books I'd want to reprint were written for savvy publishers like Harlequin and Berkley who have held on to electronic rights. But I do have another option: Publish new e-books myself.

Theater owners are exerting a lot of power over the studios to withhold access to content that people want to see. That's bad for consumers, that's bad for studios, and ultimately, I think it will be bad for theaters.

I've seen articles suggesting that Wal-Mart buys at prices lower than our competitors', and that this gives Wal-Mart an unfair advantage. I don't believe it... What we hear is concern that in some circumstances, Wal-Mart may actually be paying more than our competitors.

I've been saying for years that readers want inexpensive ebooks.

My biggest concern about the market is the force that acts to drive down price, because I think that's destructive to authors as well as publishers. Our biggest battle is to underline the value of intellectual property.

You'll have lower prices under deregulation than you will through regulation.

Very, very rarely do you find bands underpricing.

Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies.

Likewise let butchers, fishmongers, hostlers, brewers, bakers, pullers and all other vendors of any victuals, be bound to sell such victuals for a reasonable price, having regard for the price at which such victuals are sold in the adjoining places: so that such vendors may have moderate gains, not excessive…

Scientific journals are monopolies…and when there's a monopoly there's always the opportunity for extra profit.

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.