E-book buyers expect discounts, buy more

"UK e-book buyers are expecting digital titles to be discounted heavier than their counterparts across the Atlantic, a new survey has found.

The survey, undertaken in April by consultants Simon-Kucher and Partners among 250 book buyers from the US, UK and Germany, concluded an e-book without additional features should cost around 65% to 70% of the print price, though admitted there was "no simple formula" in hitting the pricing sweet spot. The survey also found current e-book users spend more on books than book buyers in general. According to the survey, 48% of book buyers in the US used e-books as well as audio and print, 45% in the UK, but just 15% in Germany."

More: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/e-book-buyers-expect-discounts-do-buy-more.html

The secret world of Amazon reviewers

'But there is some new evidence suggesting that Amazon’s customer reviewers—particularly the top 1,000 reviewers—do not always make independent decisions about which books and other products they write about. According to anew Cornell study
 that we previewed last week, the reviewers in many cases acknowledge that in order to maintain their high rankings and continue to receive free products (one of the perks of being a top reviewer), they have to make surprisingly calculated decisions about what to review and what to say about those products. 

The author of the study, Cornell professor Trevor Pinch, says the fundamental problem is that people reading the reviews probably naturally assume that the Amazon reviewers are regular shoppers just like them—when, in fact, their relationship to the products they review can be a little more complicated. “The issue of the ‘customers’ not really being customers needs to be addressed,” says Pinch, who surveyed 166 of Amazon’s top 1,000 reviewers for his study.'

More:
http://m.paidcontent.org/article/419-what-shoppers-dont-realize-about-amazons-reviews/

Jack King

USA the spitting image of communism

Not many people remember, or want to remember those days behind the Iron Curtain when lining up was a part of everyday routine. Everyday one lined up somewhere, elbowed, pushed and shoved, tramped over people to get inside a store, or an office, or a bus. In those days people lined up for the basic necessities that they could not find regularly, such as bread, meat, flour, toilet paper, or vodka, somehow finding out via the grape vine that this or that store in town will receive a limited supply sometimes next week.

Today we have the "black friday". People line up everywhere on this side of what once was the Iron Curtain. They line up all night for a chance to elbow, push, shove, sometimes even tramp someone to death, all in a rush to buy something.

The difference between line ups in communist countries vs America - over there people lined up for things they needed, here they do it for the sheer excitement, out of boredom, greed and consumerism, sometimes out of false sense of frugality: it's cheap, so I'll buy a truckload, never mind that I'll pay four times the value of this crap in credit card fees...

Communist Poland:

US of A: