Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcorner
Customers are ruthless and won't hesitate to vote with their feet, if they can find what they want for less, elsewhere.
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Especially if they feel like they're being ripped off, which ebook buyers have felt for years with ebooks being offered at hardcover prices (and much more so when those prices ~don't drop accordingly~ as cheaper print editions come out).
The ebook as it stands, all DRM-restricted and essentially made out of thin air, is NOT equal in value to a hardcover, not even when they come out on the same day. So the price needs to be lower OR the publisher needs to emulate Apple's computer business and add value to the ebook version--Apple's computers cost more than most other brands, but they're still in business because their customers feel that they are getting actual value for their money. Simply TELLING people that the ebook has the same value as the hardcover isn't the way to go about increasing the perceived value of the ebook. That's how you make customers feel like you're trying to rip them off. The publisher who can offer something that DOES increase the perceived value of a new release ebook--bonus material, say, or DRM free, or delivered a week before the hardcover release date--will have much better chance of getting people to pay hardcover prices, if that's what they're dead set on getting people to pay.