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Originally Posted by GregS
Sorry this probably the wrong thread to bring this up, I am new to the forum.
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Not really... the points you've mentioned have been discussed all over this forum! And largely, those here agree with you. Who knows, however, when some sort of "micropayment" system will come about? In the meantime, simply pricing books at a lower cost appropriate to digital files would suffice.
Two things to think about, regarding cost: Firstly, just because it's cheap, doesn't mean more people will buy. My books, for instance, are priced significantly lower than other e-books, but that doesn't mean word about me has been spreading like wildfire throughout the web (trust me, it hasn't), and that I've been getting sales to rival Amazon (trust me, I haven't!). It's a big web-based market, but spreading the word to all those people is difficult, and usually costly.
Secondly, a fair payment in one area can still be exhorbitant in another. Although in the U.S., book prices are (generally) considered on the high side of reasonable, in other parts of the world, the cost of a book could be a day's salary, even a week's salary. You are challenged to price something to get the maximum of profit, but that can be hard to determine in a global market. Will I make more money by cutting my price to a tenth, and thereby get more foreign purchases? Will there be enough foreign purchases to make that work? It's tough to determine.
This is one of the reasons why publishers have it so tough: The market has changed to digital, and they waited too long to deal with the many variables involved with global web-based selling; now they're caught with their pants down, and trying to figure out how to recover (or whether to give up the market and retire).