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Originally Posted by GA Russell
Second, I don't see the price of eBooks having dropped over time. Can anyone cite examples of titles dropping when the paperback came out?
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AFAIK it can take a year for the paperback to come out, so it's probably too soon for most books.
That said, I can't definitively state the earlier prices. However, here are a couple of ebooks with agency pricing, released in 2010, that are far less than $15:
http://www.amazon.com/Just-Kids-eboo...RJV5Z6VNY3TFJE
http://www.amazon.com/Will-Grayson-e...RJV5Z6VNY3TFJE
There are also ebooks which are NOT agency priced, released in April, where Amazon is setting the price far above $10:
http://www.amazon.com/Devil-Sherlock...RJV5Z6VNY3TFJE
http://www.amazon.com/Play-Their-Hea...RJV5Z6VNY3TFJE
Keep in mind none of this is comprehensive -- you'd really need to record Amazon's ebook prices over the past 2 years to determine how agency pricing has actually affected prices.
However, since the $10 price point was far from universal (even at Amazon), and since so many ebooks are not using agency pricing: I suspect the fears of massive book price hikes may be real, but if so they are exaggerated.
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Originally Posted by GA Russel
I'm much more concerned about the lack of interest (or ability) of the publishers in releasing back catalogue titles of deceased authors.
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Well, there's only so much they can do.
• Publishers do not have unlimited budgets or staff, and it takes time and money to release back catalog ebooks.
• The authors/estates may well want to use a different publisher for ebooks as for paper.
• Authors / estates may hold out for better royalty rates.
• Authors / estates may just hate the idea of digital books (I can't imagine JD Salinger, for example, ever authorizing an ebook of
Catcher in the Rye).
• Paper sales may be so low as to not justify priority for an ebook release.
• The works in question may be orphans -- e.g the original publisher holder may be out of business; author or estate may be unlocatable; rights may be in dispute.
• There may be as many as 20
million print titles in existence -- possibly more.
• Despite all this, Amazon has gone from 100k to over 700k ebook titles offered in the past 2 years.
In other words, it's not like Penguin can snap its fingers and release its entire back catalog in digital form overnight. A process like this takes time and money.