Ebook price frustration

[redarm]

I recieved a Kindle for Christmas which was a nice surprise. I actually prefer to hold a book in my hands and turn the pages and all that but since i've tried this thing out it's not bad. It stores a lot of stuff including music and personal documents, which is a function I will certainly use.

 

My frustration is with the prices that are asked for most of the ebooks. Many of them are more expensive than their paperback counterparts which is crazy. No paper, shipping, storage, printing etc. and yet they are charging $10 for ebooks that you can get for $7 or $8 in paperback at the store.

 

I would be fine even paying the same as a paperback but it still seems crazy to me. I guess for now i'll stick to the freebies offered and maybe see if my local library lends ebooks (a very cool feature!) until I see some deals out there on the books I want. I would gladly spend money on the ebooks if the prices were reasonable.

[Red2111]

yeah i'm with you, i have a sony ereader now, but have yet to hook it up. once i start getting books, i would certantly expect the books to be way less expensive than the paper backs (or hardcover in the case of new releases)

 

edit - come to think of it, they maybe doing it this way to help buffer the hit to the printed book industry, so the hardcovers/paperbacks dont go the same way CD's did when iTunes went big

[JenniferL]

Ebooks are in a weird position, everyone seems to expect the price to drop to 99 cents just because the physical media is gone. However, the cost of paper and ink is actually the cheapest part of producing the book. What you are really paying for is the author, editor, skilled copy editors, cover artist, layout artist, art director, publicity guy, etc. Sure, music has associated production costs, but all in all, it's much cheaper to create and distribute. Mass market (paperback) books can be priced cheaper, because the production costs were all covered by those who purchased the hardcover release. If a book is released in only an electronic format, which is what publishers will be will eventually happen, ten dollars per download is enough to stay in business.

 

That said, if you're looking for free eBooks, Baen has a free eBook library. They give away copies of the first and sometimes second book in many of their series. http://www.baen.com/library/

[Sleeper]

I'm actually perfectly happy with the prices of ebooks. I'm perfectly fine with paying $10 for a book (and it's usually not even that high, my experience is that it's around $7, though it can go as high as $15 or more if you're getting a new release) that I don't have to lug around in physical form and can access from any mobile platform or PC.

[Alanna]

Huh. That's really weird, I have a nook and the prices are almost always cheaper. A lot of the mass markets are sometimes the same price, but I don't think I've ever come across one more expensive than the actual book.

[Kaznen]

Amazon was pressured by publishers to raise their ebook prices a few years ago. They had been selling kindle books at a lost to themselves.

[Cybertrolloc]

Don't forget ibiblio or guttenberg (many out of © books available, just need to coax your reader into handling the files, they have a couple different formats available).

 

jenniferl, it goes a bit beyond what the publisher press release says :) Cover price includes two levels of markup, that I don't know off the top of my head in round numbers, and varies by publisher anyway. There's other friction/idiocy in publishing, they're where record companies were 15 years ago or so. I expect things to continue stupid for a good while.

[Kaznen]

I still think Cost of Production goes factors into price of a tree carcass book. Higher print orders mean lower costs to produce, per unit. Then factor in the cost of shipping, warehousing, and the cost sellers pay per unit and the cost of having a brick and mortar store staffed with friendly employees to sell the book has a major factor in the price. It is why Amazon is able to sell tree carcasses for so little. They ship from warehouse to customer you don't need to go to your local Amazon store and wait in line. And where the price you pay is also used to pay the 40 employees at the store and their cafe.

 

An e-book is click, download, read.

 

EDIT:

Don't get me wrong though, the author, editor, and publisher all deserve to get paid. I do think 99cents is unreasonable, but paying $9.99 for the kindle version of Jim Butcher's Storm Front when the MMP of the same book is ridiculous. Butcher and the people at Roc still get their cut. And I doubt Amazon charges an equal price to keep the book on their servers then the print houses charge to print and warehouse a book.

[Crowl Rife]

I'd rather buy eBooks at this point, but when they are the same price or higher than a physical version, I generally won't buy it unless I really, really want it on Kindle. Publishers need to accept that eBooks aren't going away, that the good ol' days where they controlled everything are gone and just man up and price eBooks accordingly. If they can't price an electronic version with low overhead below a physical version with high overhead, they really need to rethink the cost structure in their overall business.

[Noname]

Hey be happy, in Aus most ebooks go for the paperback or hardback price . Im not one to quibble over prices when it comes to a good old book, but ebooks being 30 bucks is over the top.... and the fact that we cant get most here is frustrating, ill pay if they make them avaliable!

[Kaznen]

Just saw this on Yahoo today.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/apple-major-publishers-hit-federal-antitrust-lawsuit-over-162802123.html

 

Apple and other publishers conspired to fix ebook prices forcing amzon to raise theirs.

 

I knew Steve Jobs was up to no good.

 

Well, now he is in Hell.

[Suttree]

Just saw this on Yahoo today.

http://news.yahoo.co...-162802123.html

 

Apple and other publishers conspired to fix ebook prices forcing amzon to raise theirs.

 

I knew Steve Jobs was up to no good.

 

Well, now he is in Hell.

 

I haven't been following too closely but from what I understand this is a bad decision that will give Amazon an unfair advantage and do a good deal of harm to the industry. The cheaper price looks nice in the in the short term but this is going erode competition and absolutely kill independent bookstores.

 

http://www.nytimes.c...=general&src=me

[Azrayne]

Yes it's absurd, it's straight up greed, which is why I pirate as many of my ebooks as possible (which is almost every one, as it turns out).

 

There's no excuse for charging $10 - $20 for a .pdf file, especially when authors get the same cut as they would from a paperback despite the publisher expending a fraction of the cost.

[Jaedan_edhel]

In the UK, paper books are priced at a ridiculous amount, now. I've not yet seen a more expensive Kindle book than it's paperback counterpart. However, a brand new book is sometimes only about 50p cheaper on the kindle - this tends to come down in price quite rapidly, though, while the print price remains higher.

The 2009 reprint of EotW (which I've just purchased for a friend from a market) is £8.99 on the cover; the current price in Waterstones is £10.99. Back in 1996, my paperback cover-price was £5.99 (although I bought it at the same market as above for much less).

That's just fiction. Non-fiction is even worse; yesterday I rejected a book at £14.99 that was only 90 pages long!

 

There are also many books available very cheaply - I have found several Urban Fantasy novels either free or for about 77p (which I think is about $1) from Amazon, but these seem to be part of a project on Kindle for new authors to get their books published electronically, rather than with a publishing house. There also seems to be a very wide mix of quality for these products if the reviews are anything to go by.

[lenardo]

on this topic i agree with the first poster, there is no reason AT ALL to charge the same price, what they SHOULD be charging is a reasonable markup from the wholesale cost of the book to the retailer.

 

if i remember correctly, the retailer pays X for the book and then Sells the book for MSRP for the book, the retailer pays around half (could be more could be less, i have been out of retail for ~20 years or i'd be able to get exact figures)of the msrp for the book to the publisher and then sells for the msrp(generally) so that the publisher(meaning the publishing house, the editors, the author etc all get paid)makes a profit, and the retailer makes a profit off of the book (publisher does not get "8" dollars per book if the msrp is "8"dollars)

 

the problem i have is,,, ebooks charging retail paperback pricing, which means that the publisher makes more if you buy directly from the publisher, and the retailer makes a bit more- depending on if the publisher charges the same amount to the retailer for the book physical copy vs electronic,

 

the cost of storing an ebook on a server is PENNIES per year so that is 100% not a factor in the pricing (i did the rough math a few months ago using godaddy's pricing for server costs/harddrive storage space and it came out that i could store a quarter million books for less than half a cent per book annually.

 

 

if baen(www.baen.com) can sell their hardcover ebook releases for 6 DOLLARS from their Own website and make a profit, then you know you are getting ripped off at both Amazon or B&N.

 

Note- baen does not sell their ebooks on either amazon OR Barnes and Noble sites until they are Paperback released they are only available @Baenebooks.com. oh and it still Costs 6 DOLLARS for said ebook when it is released in paperback form at both B&N or Amazon, but I'd rather give my money directly to Baen.

[Masema]

Really? I have a nook and all the prices are about the same as they are in the store (B&N) in paperback. I've actually found some great deals too. I just got the whole LOTR trilogy for $10 where they were originally selling for 8.99 individually.

[Xeratul]

Yeah, I've got no sympathy for book publishers. I took an entertainment law class last semester that really showed me the fraudulent accounting (called "creative accounting" by its users) that book publishers, music publishers, and movie studios use. Their business models are simply not sustainable, and they are being forced to adapt to the new millennium.

 

One example from a movie studio; they have an accounting method (at least one US District Court has declared fraudulent) that makes it so every movie produced shows a loss. There were fewer than 10 films produced in Hollywood last year that showed a profit. They do this, so they don't have to pay out contract clauses that promise "net points." With this method, their are never any net profits to distribute.

 

Another example from record companies; most record companies still include a clause in their standard contract that allows for an artist to get royalties on 90% of units sold. This is a carryover from the 1940's when records were made from shellac and some broke in transit. The companies would force the artists to bear the burden of this breakage. Breakage doesn't happen anymore, but the record companies still force artists to pay for it.

 

So yeah, down with the man.

[peacesells]

Yes it's absurd, it's straight up greed, which is why I pirate as many of my ebooks as possible (which is almost every one, as it turns out).

 

There's no excuse for charging $10 - $20 for a .pdf file, especially when authors get the same cut as they would from a paperback despite the publisher expending a fraction of the cost.

 

We live in a free market system and that market determines price. If you are willing to spend $10 on a book, retailers will charge $10 for a book. It's that simple. If someone is charging less it's because they think they can make more money in gross volume than by charging more. There is nothing altruistic about it. (Although there are exceptions to every rule.)

[Xeratul]

Yes it's absurd, it's straight up greed, which is why I pirate as many of my ebooks as possible (which is almost every one, as it turns out).

 

There's no excuse for charging $10 - $20 for a .pdf file, especially when authors get the same cut as they would from a paperback despite the publisher expending a fraction of the cost.

 

We live in a free market system and that market determines price. If you are willing to spend $10 on a book, retailers will charge $10 for a book. It's that simple. If someone is charging less it's because they think they can make more money in gross volume than by charging more. There is nothing altruistic about it. (Although there are exceptions to every rule.)

 

Except Apple and five of the major publishers are price fixing...hence the anti-trust lawsuit. They are trying to keep Amazon from pricing the books super low, which they will do if they can. Amazon makes up the money they lose on pricing bestsellers down with their self-publishing scam...I mean feature. (They are scamming the writers, not the readers.)

 

Amazon is actually paying the publishers as much as anyone else. They are simply selling for less. The publishers are furious that Amazon chooses to make less money. It's pretty much BS. But that's why publishers are going the way of the Cuckoo.

[Suttree]

Yes it's absurd, it's straight up greed, which is why I pirate as many of my ebooks as possible (which is almost every one, as it turns out).

 

There's no excuse for charging $10 - $20 for a .pdf file, especially when authors get the same cut as they would from a paperback despite the publisher expending a fraction of the cost.

 

We live in a free market system and that market determines price. If you are willing to spend $10 on a book, retailers will charge $10 for a book. It's that simple. If someone is charging less it's because they think they can make more money in gross volume than by charging more. There is nothing altruistic about it. (Although there are exceptions to every rule.)

 

Except Apple and five of the major publishers are price fixing...hence the anti-trust lawsuit. They are trying to keep Amazon from pricing the books super low, which they will do if they can. Amazon makes up the money they lose on pricing bestsellers down with their self-publishing scam...I mean feature. (They are scamming the writers, not the readers.)

 

Amazon is actually paying the publishers as much as anyone else. They are simply selling for less. The publishers are furious that Amazon chooses to make less money. It's pretty much BS. But that's why publishers are going the way of the Cuckoo.

 

Here is a pretty good NY Times article on the topic that I posted a while back, per usual it seems as if the indie stores are taking more hits.

 

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all