Would you pay more for ebook than paperback?

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by xendula

You will in Kindle format, now that KF8 is here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000729511

Most of that was already possible with ePUB, if not all. Amazon is pretty much playing catch-up with KF8/AZW3.

Didn't get the publishers that created ePUBs to actually use those capabilities, in general. I doubt whether KF8 will

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Most of that was already possible with ePUB, if not all. Amazon is pretty much playing catch-up with KF8/AZW3.

Didn't get the publishers that created ePUBs to actually use those capabilities, in general. I doubt whether KF8 will

Quite a few ePub books use drop caps, embedded fonts, etc.

[DrNefario]

I'd kind of prefer that they didn't, to be honest.

[Barbara1955]

Nope! I will wait til long after the PB comes out. By then the ebook price really drops! Also all the errors have been corected.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by hwlester

One reason I remove DRM and clean up the EPUBs before putting them on my reader. It seems that many books rely on metadata accompanying the download to display the cover properly on the reader. I side load 90% or more of my books, so I like to have proper covers in the eBook itself.

I'm a little more understanding when there are errors in older books that were obviously OCR'd with minimal proofreading, but on modern books, I'm less tolerant of mistakes in the eBook that don't appear in the print version.

Last few books I got, had crap covers generated from a macro, with some bland background, and text slapped on of the Author's name and the title. What was really frustrating was that the proper cover was shown on the site when I got the books. Random House I know does this, one book I have from them with this is Rapacia: the Second Circle of Heck by Dale E. Basye. It is a solid black background, with gold text with title, subtitle, author, illustrator, and the Random House logo. I have a few others, from some of their sublabels, and those are very ugly. One from the Delacorte imprint, tiled background of a pale blue chicken, title in red Times New Roman, author in blue Times New Roman.

Some of the books I have, use bad scans of the title page for the cover. Stephen King's back catalog seems to be really bad about this. Gerald's Game originally included a drawing for the background of the Title Page, but it was scanned in as black/white, so with the shading, the drawing is almost totally black. It's also fairly pixelated.

I mean, it just pisses me off. If you want me to pay as much or more for an ebook, I want it to be at least of the same quality as the paper book. Way I look at it, I am getting a lower quality product (bad scans, missing or shoddy covers) with more restrictions (no lending, no resale, often no refunds), so I shouldn't be expected to pay as much. Instead, whenever I buy a book, if I want it to look presentable, I am expected to strip the DRM, find and insert a scan of the normal cover, and correct typos from OCR errors. Plus, I've had to prune the tags on the ebooks, because not that long ago my wife's PRS300 started locking up, because it got bogged down with the number of tags on the books. She has about 400 books on her reader, and some of the books had an insane amount of tags. One had 65(!) tags. Which also, the Sony readers have Collections, that generate based on tags. She had more pages of collections (with 10 per page) than she had total books on her reader.

[Quexos]

Nope I would not, in fact I don't ...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by hwlester

Exactly.
I'm not sure what publishers are using to typeset current books, but Adobe InDesign has EPUB support built right into the product, so lay out the print book, then export it straight to EPUB. Getting it from EPUB to MOBI for Amazon and retaining the formatting might not be as trivial, but the EPUB should be as good as the print version on modern books, anyway.

Perhaps you're not aware that InDesign's ePub export is hardly the turn-key affair it's advertised as? Many people have found they have nearly as much work involved fixing/tweaking an ePub that InDesign has created as they would have had they simply started from scratch.

[Namekuseijin]

never

There's no costs with materials, print, transportation. The cost of a single download once a transaction is successful is negligible compared to the physical way.

It's a highly artificial price still trying to account for costs and careers that don't have any relevance any more. The author only gets about 2% of retail price? Cut about all 90% of that and give the author more like 80% and you get a fair price for an ebook.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by dkperez

ABSOLUTELY NOT!

I DO take into account the revenues already generated by the hardcover AND paperback versions, the minimal incremental cost of producing the e-book, the lack of shipping and return costs, and the tendency of publishers, with the authors' connivance, to attempt to prevent e-books from wide availability in libraries, AND the fact that it can't be given to other readers OR provide a reduced cost to me by selling it to Half Price Books or other buyer...

So, in reality, my price point is at best, about HALF what a paperback would cost... In general, if it's more than $3.00, I wait, get it at the library, or read it on paper from the library.

I think it's very strange to buy a product not based on its use to you, but based on how much profit you think the producer deserves to make.

[hwlester]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Perhaps you're not aware that InDesign's ePub export is hardly the turn-key affair it's advertised as? Many people have found they have nearly as much work involved fixing/tweaking an ePub that InDesign has created as they would have had they simply started from scratch.

I've not used it, but I think that proves the point that many are trying to make: that many publishers don't make the extra effort to fix/tweak the ePub. Based on the ones I've read, I've had to add proper covers to about 90% of them, and fix other formatting/spelling mistakes that don't appear in the print edition in probably 60% or more.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I think it's very strange to buy a product not based on its use to you, but based on how much profit you think the producer deserves to make.

Ditto. I buy based on what I can afford and how badly I want it. Paper vs. ebook doesn't factor into it, and the only accounting involved is my own budget.

[MrDoug]

[QUOTE=jayne80;2251224]err.... I would just like to point out at this moment in time you should be comparing it to the hard back price as the paperback doesn't come out until next year, by which time the kindle price will probably have dropped.

In answer to your question, it depends on how much I want to read the book NOW, and what the chances are of it coming down in price.[/QUOTE
My answer would be, if you want it, if you want to read it.. buy it.. what's a few bucks for your pleasure? no big deal..
Doug

[djstormer]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

There is more value in a 'real book' than in a drm-locked e-book

spindlegirl, do you realize that un-drming an ebook is a very simple process using freely available, widely used, and perfectly safe software? Once the drm-free version is backed up on your PC, it's completely yours.

[NickyWithNook]

Once the paperback version comes out, I expect the ebook to drop as well, and be lower than that price. I'm fine with paying the $13 or whatever it is for a new book if I want to read a new book that badly, but I won't pay that much for an older book. If I am willing to wait for it to come out in paperback and for the price to drop, I don't care about the book enough where I NEED to have it and will pay whatever it costs. If the price doesn't come down, I can find something else to read.

[DaringNovelist]

Hmmmm...

As it has been with paper for my whole life, I will spend more for a good hardback because it's a collectable object, and I'll pay new paperback prices for other books (paper or ebook) if that's the only way I can get them.

But generally, I pay used book prices for most of my reads. At $4-5 I can afford to read a variety of books. At higher than that, I really can't.

So in answer to your question: if the ebook is priced higher than a paperback, no I don't buy it. I don't begrudge the publisher the higher price, I just don't buy it. I wait until it's cheaper, or there's a sale, or I find it used or at the library.

Camille