Quote:
Originally Posted by crashed
My main issue with Amazon is real simple, while I don't care for the closed environment, there is one area that boggles and annoys me to no end - ebook pricing.
Now I know this has to do with publishers as well as Amazon, but IF Amazon is the number 1 ebook retailer in the US (world?), then they should help spur ebook adoption faster by helping to push these book prices down considerably.
I'm sorry, but while I like ereading, I just know it's incredibly cheap to produce over a physical book, so why am I paying close if not the exact same pricing of a hard copy?
This is one area at least Apple had the balls to stand up for when it came to the music industry, it helped them by making them lower their pricing to an acceptable level where anyone doesn't mind paying the price for said music, and entering Apple's ecosystem.
Why Amazon doesn't leverage this, is likely the reason why people prefer other devices where maybe they can find or use other stores to hopefully save some cash, ect.
Someone has to get prices down if anyone in the future wants to get ahead in the ebook business.
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God do I hate having to write that (especially on this topic), but Amazon is effectively putting a lot of pressure on publishers, by actively "courting" Indie Writers, selecting the $2.99->$9.99 price range for the 70% royalties etc.
HarryT is quite right in objecting that production is only a small part of the DTBook's price. However, where I don't agree with him is that production is the only economy done on such books. EBooks means also : no returns, no transport, sometimes no distributor, no warehousing... and no staff for all these. Where it hurts Publishers the most is that they NEED to keep these costs since they sell BOTH forms of books : ebooks and DTB.