Another grossly overpriced ebook.

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by John F

I thought PDF was an open standard?

Could you expand on this. I thought that an EPub purchased from Sony could be used on any device that uses ADE DRM. Or are you talking about the Sony Library software being the key?

Thanks.

PDF is an open standard, but it allows for extensions that are proprietary. Those extensions are often used in DRM'd situations (and other situations), which results in people having to pay for licenses of those extensions or have stripped books.

And I think you're right, currently it does seem like if you get an Adobe Adept item, you can view it in different readers. This runs contrary to what I was told by a sony guy on the phone the other day, he said that if you buy an Adobe Epub book from the Sony Reader store, it only works on Sony Readers.

[Fayth]

Originally Posted by Harmon

I don't know about you, but if you are like me there have been times where the factors favoring the purchase of a paperback have led me to pay MORE for a paperback than for the hardback. This has mainly been in used bookstores, but once in a while I'll buy a more expensive paperback rather than a cheaper remaindered hardback.

Now we have a third content container, the EBR. The EBR is not a stripped down version of the other two containers. It is a separate ontainer with virtues and drawbacks of its own. And what the market may be telling us is that in some circumstances, it is actually worth more than one or even both of the other two containers.

The price of a book is meaningful to me only when it is the primary factor influencing my buying, and what's odd is that it almost never is the primary factor. I am to the point where there are some books that I simply will not buy if they are not in ebook, no matter what the price of the hardback or paperback, higher or lower. I have on a few occasions bought used or been given new a hardback or paperback, and wound up buying the ebook anyway.

So I really don't care what the hardback or paperback is selling for most of the time. And I think that the publishers grasp that. To some extent they are positioning ebooks over and against the other two kinds of books in terms of timing and pricing, but I think that the larger picture is that ebook pricing is seeking its own level in light of there being a lot of us who find the most important factor to be the ebook format itself.

I agree with this entirely. I'm not really too concerned about the price of ebooks relative to their physical counterparts. I am paying to get access to the material, the packaging is simply a matter of convenience to me. Ebooks are more convenient.

The formatting of the ebooks is what concerns me the most. I want publishers to focus on making ebooks as well formatted and as widely distributed as physical books.

[OtterBooks]

I'd love to see prices come down (who doesn't like to pay less for things?). But I have a hard time feeling indignant about them because they are an additional option I created by getting an electronic entertainment device that isn't required to read the book and that some people can't even afford to begin with. I'm still happy with the paper versions I've enjoyed my whole life, so I don't feel cheated when buying one instead of an ebook.

I certainly don't feel justified getting ebooks via shady means, as if me and my Kindle WiFi are desperate orphans stealing bread for survival.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by taustin

If you keep anything of value on your computer, anything at all, and do not keep backups. you will eventually lose it. And backups aren't a big deal if you do it right. It can be completely automated fairly easily, in the middle of the night. Or set up a shortcut on your desktop that runs it when you choose.

If you don't, you will lose everything on your computer eventually.

As close to Absolute Truth as mere mortals can get.

I have a triple backup system. Anything Important, I back up to another hard drive, automagically, with Time Machine. Any thing Really Important, I keep in hard copy, either paper or CD. Anything Really Truly Important is in my safe deposit box.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by NVash

The paperback is $5, the hardback is $10, ebook is $12? Plus you have DRM on the ebook? It makes no sense but they dont care. I dont know much about how things work for them, who gets paid and how much but I honestly believe that the minute they start lowering prices theyll start making money hand over fist.

I dunno about that. Things don't always behave in an arithmetical fashion. There's probably a sweet spot for profit consisting of (1) a certain number of ebooks sold at a certain price, that produces more profit than (2) more ebooks sold at a lower price, or (3) fewer ebooks sold at a higher price. Heck, there might also be a sweet spot at which a higher price sells MORE ebooks - people sometimes attach value to things that cost more. And it's probably different for different books.

In short, we seem to be in a pricing shakedown period, where publishers are trying out different strategies. The problem for publishers is to try to find the right mix of several things: book format, timing of issuance, relative pricing, and who knows what other things, all sufficient to maximize the return on investment.

I do know that a year ago, we all seemed to be talking about idiot publishers who would not issue ebooks at all, thus losing sales. Now more and more of them are not that kind of idiots. So now we are talking about idiot publishers who are not pricing ebooks correctly. A year from now, who knows?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Harmon

So now we are talking about idiot publishers who are not pricing ebooks correctly. A year from now, who knows?

I'm sure it will feature "idiot publishers," though.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Redcard

PDF is an open standard, but it allows for extensions that are proprietary. Those extensions are often used in DRM'd situations (and other situations), which results in people having to pay for licenses of those extensions or have stripped books.

...

I'm not sure I follow what your trying to get across then (from what I quoted originally). You said:

...
"EPub is EPub"
"PDF is Adobe PDF"
...

So what does that mean? Shouldn't you have said: "PDF is PDF".

Also, I was under the impression/guessing that EPub also "allows for extensions that are proprietary."

[Daniel A Roberts]

Responding to the OP, I agree. Ebook prices are getting out of hand. Not trying to self promote here, but ALL of my ebooks for sale are fairly priced, per word count for fiction and per subject matter for non-fiction. As of yet, I have to go over the $4.99 mark, with my cheapest being free. Yeah, I got a freebie out there. I don't think another dime should be spent on vampire fiction as it's overdone to death these days, and so it is with my work.

When I see a paperback being sold for less than the ebook version, I consider it total ripoff. If my most favorite loved book ever goes into ebook and they charge more, I'll refuse to buy it. A physically printed book incurs far more costs for production and delivery and should always bear the brunt of that cost to the reader.

And so I think the savings in making an ebook and distributing it in electronic format should pass on the savings equally well.

Just my 2 cents. But since this post is electronic, consider it Just my Freebie.

[outlander78]

My three complaints about eBooks, in order of importance, are:

1. DRM - I want DRM-free epub books
2. Selection - there are lots of books that I would like to buy that are not available for sale (Star Trek, Star Wars and Forgotten Realms novels, mostly)
3. Price - I don't want to pay $10 for novels, I think $5 is about right, but I will pay $10 if the above two are fixed to my liking

[outlander78]

For iTunes, there was recently a change where prices went up 20%, but DRM was removed, and so far as I know sales were not affected. If the publishers want to keep the price high, perhaps they should concede the DRM, which is only antagonizing paying customers anyways - as with games and music, DRM will not slow pirates.

[Angst]

Originally Posted by Harmon

I dunno about that. Things don't always behave in an arithmetical fashion. There's probably a sweet spot for profit consisting of (1) a certain number of ebooks sold at a certain price, that produces more profit than (2) more ebooks sold at a lower price, or (3) fewer ebooks sold at a higher price. Heck, there might also be a sweet spot at which a higher price sells MORE ebooks - people sometimes attach value to things that cost more. And it's probably different for different books.

In short, we seem to be in a pricing shakedown period, where publishers are trying out different strategies. The problem for publishers is to try to find the right mix of several things: book format, timing of issuance, relative pricing, and who knows what other things, all sufficient to maximize the return on investment.

I do know that a year ago, we all seemed to be talking about idiot publishers who would not issue ebooks at all, thus losing sales. Now more and more of them are not that kind of idiots. So now we are talking about idiot publishers who are not pricing ebooks correctly. A year from now, who knows?

Retailers were alot more attentive to the price/sales issue than publishers seem to be. The agency five treat the ebook price like the Ronco Rotisserie: they set it and forget it. A typical retailer, under the old model, would discount a book to gain more sales and maximize profits as a result. Publishers, acting like a monopolies, charge the highest sustainable price for their product. (They do have a monopoly on any given non-public-domain book.)

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Daniel A Roberts

Responding to the OP, I agree. Ebook prices are getting out of hand. Not trying to self promote here, but ALL of my ebooks for sale are fairly priced, per word count for fiction and per subject matter for non-fiction. As of yet, I have to go over the $4.99 mark, with my cheapest being free. Yeah, I got a freebie out there. I don't think another dime should be spent on vampire fiction as it's overdone to death these days, and so it is with my work.

When I see a paperback being sold for less than the ebook version, I consider it total ripoff. If my most favorite loved book ever goes into ebook and they charge more, I'll refuse to buy it. A physically printed book incurs far more costs for production and delivery and should always bear the brunt of that cost to the reader.

And so I think the savings in making an ebook and distributing it in electronic format should pass on the savings equally well.

Just my 2 cents. But since this post is electronic, consider it Just my Freebie.

Yes, but Daniel, your costs are not the same as that of a publisher, so it's comparing an apple to an electron. The comparison simply has nothing to do with why a publisher might be charging.

The publishers need to figure out how to come up with a product that the market will buy (either books sooooo good and guaranteed we'll pay 15 dollars or cheaper books we'll actually pay for.)

One of the reasons you're able to do what you do is because the medium for getting books out there is changing. For publishers, they haven't changed yet. They haven't figured out how to get costs down, how to produce that same product for cheaper--or they aren't willing to.

[GeoffC]

Mayhap publishers see readers priced at hundred(s) pounds/dollars and they are thinking 'if they are that price the public will be willing to pay for the books to read on them....'

If you don't like the price go elsewhere - alternatively find authors/publishers selling at a price you can stomach. Other than my dictionary and another couple of reference books my price limit has been $6 (or the GBP equivalent) and I've had the opportunity to read books (good ones too) by authors who I otherwise would not have considered.

[kindlekitten]

I've run into a truly outrageously priced book Gun Women. I have the dead tree copy of this book, but would really like to have it in an e-version. the dead tree at Amazon is listed as $50 and the ebook at $32. my personal copy is completely marked up, and highlighted so scanning is not an option

[edbro]

Personally, I don't feel the need to have the latest book immediately after it is published. I keep a list of books to read but I don't buy right away. There are so many good books out there that I can fill my needs with yesterday's bestsellers.

One thing I did was to Google past prize winners and past bestsellers. Some of my best reads have come from that. Last month I finished Gone With The Wind, a book spurred by that search. One of the best books I've ever read.

My suggestion; read last year's bestsellers today and read today's next year.