Are The Days Of The $14.99 Ebook Numbered?

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's easy enough to buy UK books from the US if you want to do so.

True, but it's not completely non-trivial

I miss the good old days when the booksellers didn't care where you lived.

[NickyWithNook]

I have paid $14.99 for an ebook. I prefer ebooks to paperback because I can change the font size. But the more a book costs, the less likely I am to buy it. If I have a group of 5 books I'd like to read and the one I most want to read is $14.99 but the second choice is $7, I'll almost certainly get the second choice.

I think when you're buying a brand new book, if it's important for you to read the book soon after it comes out, you'll probably pay a premium for that. There are a few authors where I'll buy the book right away when it comes out no matter the cost, but for the most part I can wait until the price drops, or just choose something else. There are lots of books to choose from.

[medard]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

I miss the good old days when the booksellers didn't care where you lived.

Yes that was really great. I could choose if someone reads the book aloud over the telephone or if I'd like to wait two months for shipment of the printed copy.

Good old days.

[Kurt]

here here!

if the ebook is sold at a higher price than the paperback i can do without (after checking overdrive of course)

most annoying are those sales (remaindered) of hardcovers for a few bucks and the ebook is "full price"

so far other than a few ebooks from baen i've purchased exactly 1 at full price - "a dance with dragons" - COULD NOT RESIST

[Kurt]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's easy enough to buy UK books from the US if you want to do so.

so we are told - no clue on how that is done though

was on SFgateway for the first time last night but wasn't able to actually purchase anything
mostly was sent off to find on amazon just to find out there is no ebook of whatever i was interested in
sigh, want to get my hands/eyeballs on some older SF/Fantasy (that is not priced uhm, stupidly) but not having much luck

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's your personal choice, of course, but that does seem to be placing a very low value on the work involved in writing a book. That's about a third the price of a typical paperback in the UK.

Personally I'm not prepared to pay more than about £2-£2.50, but as I don't buy newly released books, I could pick any of them up secondhand for £1.50-£2, and I'm prepared to pay a little more for the convenience of not having to actually go out and buy them.

[jersysman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's your personal choice, of course, but that does seem to be placing a very low value on the work involved in writing a book. That's about a third the price of a typical paperback in the UK.

It might be, but at that price I have so many good books to read. Why would I pay more?

[Barty]

The thing with ebooks is there are really no MPB, remainder, or bargain bin equivalent.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Barty

The thing with ebooks is there are really no MPB, remainder, or bargain bin equivalent.

This will be a problem down the road. What happens in ten or twenty years, when paper books are a high-priced niche item, like 33 RPM records today? There will be so few paper books going into the used marketplace that the price of used books -- now often little more than the cost of postage -- will skyrocket. Without competition from used books and the bargain bin, publishers will be able to raise prices.

If I'm right, the days of the $14.99 major publisher eBook could indeed by numbered at, oh, say, 5,000. After that, you won't find 'em that cheap.

Or it could go the other way, with publishers forced to lower prices due to competition from self-published and/or pirated books. Nobody knows.

[dkperez]

I'm with the $3.99 maximum folks... I'm finding PLENTY of interesting fiction at that price or lower, and although I have a bunch of books on my "to read" list, most of them are from publishers trying to get $12 - $14 or even MORE...

I just always remember the process those e-books are part of... Author to publisher who edits and prints VERY expensive hard covers. And MAKES money. Then prints cheaper, but still very expensive, paperbacks. And MAKES money. And does basically NOTHING (half the time it doesn't even look like they did a decent proof read and reformat) to create an e-book and tries to get MORE than the paperback and POSSIBLY MORE than the hard cover...

A recent example is the re-release of the John D McDonald books. I read MANY Travis McGee paperbacks when younger... If I recall correctly, they went for somewhere between $0.50 and $1.00. So, when I saw the topic I figured, "Great, I'll go get 'em ALL." Til I saw that they wanted $8 - $9 for each of 'em... IF the publisher or whoever is setting the price decides they'd rather sell a lot of books for $2.99 instead of fewer for $9, I'll buy the whole bunch. Til then, nope.

[QuantumIguana]

Paper books aren't the only think pushing the price down on e-books. Competition with other e-books also does this. I paid $2.99 for a good e-book. That $14.99 book had better be pretty good, or I'll see what other good books I can get for $2.99.

[TechniSol]

I think that as editing and ebook formatting tools improve and technology marches on, publishing houses are going to become marginalized as there will be less and less room for the overhead of a middleman. My guess is that there are going to be a lot more freelance editors and compilers of ebooks. Sigil is not exactly there yet, but one can figure it out. With the right tools a decent editor could probably make some pretty decent money working from wherever they happen to be and in some cases provide a better service as many epubs today seem not to be that well edited, heck, some seem to not even be spell checked.

Frankly, I'd like to see a writer's association step out, set up a website and offer their member's books, but I imagine it's still early days and that published writer's for now are quite happy with advances and minimal risk...

My guess is that over time the model changes. Look at television(sorry, but really, there is more than "wrestling" on) for an example of a very changed landscape compared to the early individual company sponsored programming and later totally advertising based models. Television was "free" when I was a kid, of course there were commercials, today you pay for cable, satellite, as well as movie channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. without advertising -well, minimal advertising as product placement has been introduced directly into the movie content... but, there are a gazillion(hyperbole, bless you) channels and programs on today some of which are appealing to almost anyone that would never have existed under the network model. Imagine that same explosion with self publishing, we're seeing the beginnings now.

I think with self publishing more and more authors are going to drop the middleman, and many are getting works out there that we might never see until a publisher deems it worth the investment to gamble and lay out for an advance, editing, publishing, promotion, etc., or never otherwise see at all. I'd rather pay an author double or more what they'd get in terms of percentage from a publisher, if I didn't have to support the middleman and it would still be cheaper than paperbacks.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

I think that as editing and ebook formatting tools improve and technology marches on, publishing houses are going to become marginalized as there will be less and less room for the overhead of a middleman. My guess is that there are going to be a lot more freelance editors and compilers of ebooks. Sigil is not exactly there yet, but one can figure it out. With the right tools a decent editor could probably make some pretty decent money working from wherever they happen to be and in some cases provide a better service as many epubs today seem not to be that well edited, heck, some seem to not even be spell checked.

I'm still skeptical. Editors aren't free and aren't cheap, and I don't see a lot of indie writers shelling out thousands of dollars up front for editing services.

But this isn't something that we have to decide; the market will decide this question and we can stand by and vote with our wallets.

Frankly, I'd like to see a writer's association step out, set up a website and offer their member's books, but I imagine it's still early days and that published writer's for now are quite happy with advances and minimal risk...

My guess is that over time the model changes. Look at television(sorry, but really, there is more than "wrestling" on) for an example of a very changed landscape compared to the early individual company sponsored programming and later totally advertising based models. Television was "free" when I was a kid, of course there were commercials, today you pay for cable, satellite, as well as movie channels like HBO, Showtime, etc. without advertising -well, minimal advertising as product placement has been introduced directly into the movie content... but, there are a gazillion(hyperbole, bless you) channels and programs on today some of which are appealing to almost anyone that would never have existed under the network model. Imagine that same explosion with self publishing, we're seeing the beginnings now.

Television has changed a lot since the free days, and the quality is definitely better - but it also costs $50-$100/month to have access to some of the high quality programming. That's really the opposite of what's going on with e-books.

I think with self publishing more and more authors are going to drop the middleman, and many are getting works out there that we might never see until a publisher deems it worth the investment to gamble and lay out for an advance, editing, publishing, promotion, etc., or never otherwise see at all. I'd rather pay an author double or more what they'd get in terms of percentage from a publisher, if I didn't have to support the middleman and it would still be cheaper than paperbacks.

This cuts both ways: there is an advantage to getting a book that a publisher has deemed worth the investment in paying up front for an advance, editing, etc.

[rkw]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Personally I'm not prepared to pay more than about £2-£2.50, but as I don't buy newly released books, I could pick any of them up secondhand for £1.50-£2, and I'm prepared to pay a little more for the convenience of not having to actually go out and buy them.

That is me as well. I have always equated my ebook purchases to used/2nd hand pbooks. I have pretty much purchased my recreational pbook reading 2nd hand for no more than about $4.99 though usually between $0.50 - $3.99. I feel no compelling reason to pay more.

I consider any money I spend with the publisher to be "found money" for the publisher. As in they never got money from me over the past 45yrs so by publishing at a lower price they are reaching those of us who they never had as customers. Ebooks seem like a way for publishers to finally put dents in the "used" book market which has to be a big untaped revenue center which publishers have always been, naturally, locked out of.

I suspect there are a lot of us who have been used buyers who are now loving ebooks more than ever but we are not going to change our buying habits forged over the decades. Of course us dinosaurs will eventually go the way of the do-do perhaps solving the matter in the publisher's favor.

I miss Fictionwise and their amazing sales with their "points" game that could be used to buy even more books during the sales. Those folks had the right idea and were killed off by the price-fix-gang's scheme.

[Kurt]

my big problem with ebooks is that once publishers get around to releasing the back catalogue for certain authors they offer them at ridiculous prices

one recent example was ray bradury (oh yeah) - i'm not going to pay around $10 (US) when, if i could read them (one eyeball) i could buy them in paperback for a few bucks at most - hopefully the dust will settle - - - eventually