04-04-2009, 05:07 AM | #1 |
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Angry Robot Books Want Your Opinion on Ebook Pricing
Angry Robot, a new sf and fantasy imprint of Harper Collins, have set up a survey where they want you, the reader, to tell them what you think is a fair price for e-editions of their books. To take part, go here:
Angry Robot Ebook Survey |
04-04-2009, 05:10 AM | #2 |
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One Miiillioon Dollars! Joking aside, thanks for the post, will check it out right smartly |
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04-04-2009, 06:06 AM | #3 |
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their survey missed some glaring options, but i did my best with it.
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04-04-2009, 06:14 AM | #4 |
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04-04-2009, 11:56 AM | #5 |
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Well at least the range of the ebooks pricing question was from $0-$7, quite reasonable. Not the $14-$24 that some publisher want to push now.
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04-04-2009, 12:02 PM | #6 |
zeldinha zippy zeldissima
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thanks for the link ; i've completed the survey as well, if only to support a publisher who's going to the trouble to see what readers actually want.
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04-04-2009, 12:11 PM | #7 |
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Thanks for the link! I used Baen as my guideline for a suggested price; although of course I'd prefer ebooks to be as cheap as possible, I didn't want to suggest anything unreasonably low. Baen prices are quite modest and they seem to be doing OK.
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04-04-2009, 12:13 PM | #8 |
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I agree that it could've been more complete, but it sounds like it was specifically going after some thoughts they wanted answers to. Whatever the case, this survey is great and I'd love to see more publishers and etailers do this to find out what their customers really want and are willing to buy. I think some of them might be surprised. I also liked the way they worded this one:
No-one's really figured out what an ebook should cost. At the moment the standard is "like the paperback/hardback, but a little bit cheaper"... which is not exactly a brilliant strategy. I encourage everyone to fill out this survey. |
04-04-2009, 12:18 PM | #9 |
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Interesting coming from Harper Collins since they've recently started charging $14.99 for a lot of ebooks that are $7.99 as a pbook and won't explain why (not that they really have to).
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04-04-2009, 12:21 PM | #10 | |
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Quote:
And hopefully they'll be using a decent source for the ebook release - unlike some other publishers, who issue a naff OCR version that hasn't even been spell-checked. |
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04-04-2009, 12:41 PM | #11 |
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I took the survey, but there was one question I absolutely could not answer honestly. I tried to skip it, but was told "This question requires an answer". To the question "Angry Robot will make all our books available to read, either in full or in part, on the internet. How do you think this will effect your likelihood to buy Angry Robot ebooks?" I wanted to reply "I don't read books on my PC." Instead, I was forced to pick one of their prepared answers that assumed everyone is willing to read books or book samples on the Internet. See the attached image for all the choices they offered.
Oh, and by the way, the proper question would have said, "How do you think this will affect your likelihood to buy ..." One would think that someone at a publishing house would know the difference between affect and effect. |
04-04-2009, 12:45 PM | #12 |
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Actually, I think this *is* a brilliant strategy. One assumes that the publisher has a good sense of the price range that the marketplace will tolerate for a hardback or paperback book. Given that there are much lower manufacturing costs for eBooks, they should be priced less than the lowest priced print version of the book currently available. Once a book goes out of print, the eBook price should remain at a prices lower than the paperback edition.
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04-04-2009, 12:48 PM | #13 |
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Why do English speakers find it so difficult to distinguish between "effect" and "affect"?
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04-04-2009, 12:48 PM | #14 |
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i think it should only be a few dollars. i mean it really costs them nothing but their time. they can get more sales if it were cheaper
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04-04-2009, 01:02 PM | #15 |
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Agreed. If that had been a choice, I'd have picked it. So I said $5.
The first line in the version of the survey I took was "Angry Robot, the new SF, F and WTF? imprint from HarperCollins..." Okay, I got SF and F but what is "WTF?"? I mean, I'm familiar with an expression whose initialism is "wtf", but I can't figure out what that has to do with books. Unless it's a book you read that's so dense or obscure or pointless, you go wtf? |
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