Why eBooks are so expensive ?

[SerialAeon]

Hey y'all (southern salutation ;-))
As everybody here I think, I've been very interested by one of the promise of the electronic version of books, i.e. their (supposedly) low price. After all, a great part of a book's price is the cost of the advertisement made and the conception / printing / transport / managment of the unsold copies (maybe an edition professional there could precise this).

In eBooks we're left with advertisement and conception. Why, then, the observed prices are barely inferior to 30% of the price of the physical copy on most of the website I've been in ? I'd expect something like 20% OF the price of the physical copy. So far I've been very disappointed by the prices policy I observed. Any comment, or something I'm not aware of that could explain these high prices ?

Aurelien

[TadW]

Simply put, publishers are greedy and they don't want to abandon their existing business model. Hence they keep the price of e-books artificially high to make them less attractive, so nobody will buy them, and consequently they will never pick up momentum.

[rlauzon]

Originally Posted by TadW

Simply put, publishers are greedy and they don't want to abandon their existing business model. Hence they keep the price of e-books artificially high to make them less attractive, so nobody will buy them, and consequently they will never pick up momentum.

Yup that about sums it up.

When we, the customer, have to pay $300+ for the reader, we expect to make that up with lower-than-paper prices for eBooks. If they aren't cheaper, it's not worth getting the reader and, therefore, eBooks don't sell.

That's why I believe that eBook readers will take off using public domain content gleaned from places like Blackmask and Project Gutenberg, rather than "new" content (i.e. current titles in the bookstores).

Of course, the Publishers will have the same problem as the RIAA:
+ They won't satisify the market.
+ So the market satisifies itself, unfortunately, with pirated content.
+ The publishers point to all that pirated content and claim that the reason people are buying less books is because of all the pirated content - when the real reason is that they refuse to offer what the customers want.

[Riocaz]

Yes but unlike the RIAA we can happily point the the existing facts that sales have been dropping year on year for some time.

IMO books are far to expensive. They have gone from an affordable everyday product to an overpriced treat within my lifetime. And they continue to get more expensive.

Yes the products have improved (nicer paper, better printing) but this doesn't justify the cost.

[haggardpete]

Its about control. Publishers control the publishing of books and want to keep it that way. Earnings wise if you are a well known author you may end up with 10% of a paper books retail price per sale.

eBooks however can be published by anyone, for next to nothing and distributed for cents. They could be sold for half the price of a paper book, but the author could get four times the royalty and there would still be profit margin left for the retailer. And that explains why ebooks sold by the traditional book distribution businesses are so pricy. Amazon forced the game with the Kindle and now book sellers are involved – but because they have to be not because they want to be. If you owned Waterstones would you want push a format which could spell the end for your business?

Until authors start breaking away from the traditional publishers eBooks will be artificially expensive and restricted. All readers can do to help change things is to support the few authors who choose to publish eBooks independently.

[HarryT]

There's really no point in reviving a three year old thread. Especially on a subject which has been "done to death" as often as this one has.

[haggardpete]

I didnt notice! Still, Im sorry my replying to it seems to have caused you offense though I cant quite see why.

[HarryT]

No offence at all, but there's not a great deal of point in replying to someone who hasn't visited the board for two years .