Thread: Is eBook overpricing akin to an eBook tax?
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Old 12-09-2008, 05:15 AM   #29
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Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger View Post
I suspect it's fear of investing a lot of money in something that won't pay returns. I suspect it's mainly analogous to not wanting to bring out a mass market paperback until a hardcover edition has had its run
I think many publishers are holding back from ebooks for that reason, but it doesn't explain the ones who have already made that investment pricing their books at silly levels. Likewise the hardback run argument doesn't hold when the ebook price stays high after the paperback hits the discount stores. That just says that insofar as they've thought about it at all, publishers think ebook readers are rich dummies. The supply of which is being chiselled away at every day.

I'm quite keen to see someone do an Amazon-style ebookstore, and I don't particularly care if it is Amazon that does it. But the whole one stop shop is attractive to me, partly because I think they'd have the leverage to explain to recalcitrant authors or the estates therof that they will put their ebooks up just the same as everyone else, there will be no special restrictions just because the author is special. I mean that as in "special needs".

What amazes me is science fictyion authors who otherwise seem quite reasonable but who can't understand that the market they sell into is changed and they need to change their behaviour to match it. Sulking and stamping their feet just means not selling as many books. I suspect that more than half the books I've read have returned nothing to the author (or publisher) because I've bought them second hand.

Which brings me to one strong argument for cheaper pricing: currently it's not legal to sell an ebook second hand. Or pass it on to a friend once I've read it. I have a few friends that I regularly exchange books with, and with certain authors we will split the cost of the latest hardback as soon as it hits the shelves, then a few weeks later donate it to a library (once we've all read it). So we pay about $US7 each for a hot off the press hardback. Or, if we each buy the ebook (assuming it's released at the same time), we pay $US25 or more... because we are idiots, I mean, "law-abiding citizens".
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