Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
Ebooks by and large, are cheaper than hard backs by about the amount that credible sources tell us is the cost savings. But it's not good enough that an $18 hard back is sold for $14.99. Just listen to folks who swear vengeance against publishers if an ebook costs more than $9.99.
Those are the folks who never spent $25 for a hard back, who never supported the art. That they won't spend $12.99 to $14.99 doesn't matter because folks like them (including me) never mattered.
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Hm, I generally buy hardcover books, because they offer a significantly better reading experience than paperbacks, IMO.
But most of the time, I get my money's worth from hardcovers: they are generally well-made, well-designed and I can keep them forever on my bookshelf.
Ebooks currently are at best at the level of a mass-market paperback (most of the time ebooks are worse), with practically nonexistent typography, sometimes with typos, or weird formatting.
To boot, ebooks are DRM laden, in a variety of incompatible proprietary formats, which means that when I change my bookshelf (ereader), I have to re-buy all of them again. And really, without design, printing, distribution and storage costs, ebooks should be considerably cheaper than mass-market paperbacks.
Publishers can't have it both ways: they either have to provide a product which I can keep forever and transfer to my next ereader, whatever it is, and make that product good enough to be worth keeping, or they have to charge a lot less.