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Originally Posted by cjottawa
I am about "56 of 75" patrons waiting for the .epub version of "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" at my public library.
When I log in to Amazon.com, I see that book at $9.99.
I have enough reading to do that I'll wait a month or three for my number to come up at the library.
If I saw Amazon selling it for, say, $1.99, I'd buy it, no hesitation.
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I think this time/money calculation is something that people make with library books all the time, regardless of whether the book is a paper book or an e-book
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Publishers are likely causing the relatively high prices on ebooks and if they don't don't take a lesson from the music industry, they will become irrelevant. They can either have a little bit of something or a whole lot of nothing for all of me.
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The music industry had a few problems with downloaded music, but their main problem was that they didn't provide a convenient and simple way for people to buy their music. It's pretty clear that book publishers *have* taken quite a few lessons from the music industry, as obtaining ebooks from - well, Amazon, at least - is much easier than getting music from iTunes. Not only can I get a book wirelessly, I can also get it over the 3G network...and having once purchased it, I can play it on many devices. It's also backed up automatically by Amazon, where I can redownload it for free.
I don't think that the prices you've quoted are out of line, either. Most albums from iTunes cost $9.99; that seems a pretty reasonable price for a popular novel in e-book form (which is probably why Amazon picked that price originally). While I'm sure that they would sell even more copies at $1.99, I don't particularly see why the cost of two singles from iTunes should be the right price for a popular novel.