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OK, I"m new to the whole e-book world, and ignorant beyond belief about publishing, but I've gotta be missing something.......
The economy in the US is "down" (more PC than "in the toilet"), real unemployment is around 17%, there are MANY other ways for people to spend their limited entertainment time and money (movies, cable, DVDs, video games, Facebook, etc)... And yet, I read the article, and in THIS environment, McMillan decides an e-book should cost $13 - $15 instead of $10? Which is ALREADY significantly higher than the paperback cost of the same book...
For a book in a format that can't be resold, can't easily be shared, has NO residual value... I can't hand it to a friend to read. I can't take it into Half Price books and get a couple dollars back on my $6 paperback.
I don't want to start a big urination festival here (I imagine this subject has been beaten to death, but I'm new here), and I'm far from being an expert on publishing, so I don't know if it's reasonable to charge $35 for a hardcover to cover the advance, editing, binding, printing, transportation, advertising, returns, and whatever all the costs are. BUT, if the same publisher can sell the same book in paperback for $5 or $6, a paperback that STILL has to be bound, printed, transported, displayed, returned, and so on, it seems bizarre to me that an e-book, which incurs NONE of these costs, should cost 2-3 TIMES as much...
What am I missing? Are the publishers, in fact, lying?
And will the marketplace make it painfully clear (in the pocketbook) that readers are NOT willing to pay higher prices for ebooks?
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