Read a book, or read an e book?

      Once upon a time, some executives in the upper echelon of their companies collaborated to eliminate competition among e book sellers.  The target company was Amazon.com.  Why Amazon, you might ask?  Well, Amazon.com is the marketer of the KINDLE e book readers.  Customers were bewildered by the high price of e books in proportion to hardback books.  Amazon.com cut the prices of bestselling novels to $9.99, taking a loss for the price of best sellers and other e books; the KINDLE started flying off of the shelves. The exception that executives wanted to remove is the fact that $9.99 was substantially below their hardcover prices.  Chronologically speaking, it wasn’t that long ago that Amazon effectively built a monopoly on e book sales and e reader sales.  Obviously, the competition was “ooooohhh aaaahhhhhhh.”

Amazon's market share:                     60 - 90 %

Barnes & Noble's Nook market share:        25 %

iBookstore market share:                   10 % - 15 %

“According to federal court papers, the settlement agreement with three publishers said that for two years they will not restrict, limit or impede an e-book retailer's ability to set, alter or reduce the retail price of any electronic book ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47017081 ; Pete Yost)."

     Wide spread complaints were from: Texas, Connecticut, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont and West Virginia. Puerto Rico also joined the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Austin, Texas.

     Why are e books costing so much?  Look at the example above.

     Well, paper doesn't cost very much.  We set it in our consumer minds that because a product isn’t heavy, it is cheap.  The logic will confide that an e book should cost very little or next to nothing because there is no paper, printing, and shipping involved.  Not so, company publisher's costs come from expenses that still exist in an e book world: Author advances, design, marketing, publicity, office space, and staff.

     What was really happening with the price fluctuation was the e book marketplace competition that publishers wanted began to take place. In order to set the $9.99 price, Amazon.com had to lose money.  Gaining a strong customer base along with a huge percentage of the overall market was more important to the retail giant.  Rather than competing on price, e book sellers like Apple, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and others have, up until now, mainly been competing on user experience.  The companies want us to have a relatively great reading experience. Despite the poplarity of the e book experience, we are still a hardcover world.

     Ebook companies could decide on a means of plotting a solution to a two-variable problem on a graph in order to solve the small linear programming problem.  The first step is to the goal: maximize profit via objective function.  The two constraints mildly limit the degree to which the objective can be accomplished.  There are plenty of alternative courses of action in this product-mix problem, though. 

     No need, now.  The government is now telling us that the e books are inevitably going to be set at a low price, anyway.

“Barnes and Noble and Amazon continue to duke it out in the e-reader market. Barnes and Noble currently offers over 2.5 million digital books, magazines and newspapers for its Nook devices. (ABC News; JOANNA STERN (@joannastern) April 12, 2012)"

Don’t use the foam. Get ready to read about beef.

  Using ammonia hydroxide to treat lean beef trimmings will kill pathogens.  This has been the norm for quit sometime.  The food additive NH₄OH, is a widespread antimicrobial utilized by major fast food companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell restaurants.  The Food and Drug Administration has cited the pathogen killer to be generally recognized as safe (GRAS).  Studies found that replacement of sodium phosphate, used prior to the fact; with “…ammonium hydroxide would allow processors to significantly reduce the sodium content of injected fresh meat. ( J Food Sci. 2011 Jan-Feb)” The pink slime has been in use for around 20 years.
     The additive isn’t the safest additive to use.  Customers that take in beef like a vacuum on dirt don’t want to hear that.  Isn’t the customer always right?

     Beef treated with ammonium hydroxide can still be found on grocery shelves, but the listed fast food chains have discontinued its use.  The product additive won’t completely disappear, though, the slime will just get slick about where it is.  The foods with the additive will be labeled, “LEAN FINELY TEXTURED BEEF”.  Soon you will be able to qualify for a degree to shop for the healthy foods.    
In recent headlines, “Iowa Governor Terry Branstad said the campaign against the beef filler called “pink slime” by food activists is a “vicious smear” and called for a congressional probe after more than 200 Iowans lost their jobs. (Bloomberg News, By Chappatta and Brennan on 4/4/ 2012)”
     The alternative that has been mentioned to take the place of the foul sounding additive is citric acid.  This has been accepted.  In the process, there is no foam produced.  The slime is left over after the beef tissue on the slab has been heated to about 100 degrees.  After heating, the product is spun to separate the fat from the lean meat.  The ammonia functioned to kill bacteria during the heating process. Pink slime, the unwanted meat filler, was used as a low-cost additive that was added to fattier meat in order to produce a leaner overall fat content.
     How do you say in brat-terminology? “Ew.”
     Let’s all thank the fast food restaurants, that produce value meals which will stop the heart of any known human being, for not using pink slime.  In the grocery stores, you have to avoid that slime ball yourself.