Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
I don't know about you, but if you are like me there have been times where the factors favoring the purchase of a paperback have led me to pay MORE for a paperback than for the hardback. This has mainly been in used bookstores, but once in a while I'll buy a more expensive paperback rather than a cheaper remaindered hardback.
Now we have a third content container, the EBR. The EBR is not a stripped down version of the other two containers. It is a separate ontainer with virtues and drawbacks of its own. And what the market may be telling us is that in some circumstances, it is actually worth more than one or even both of the other two containers.
The price of a book is meaningful to me only when it is the primary factor influencing my buying, and what's odd is that it almost never is the primary factor. I am to the point where there are some books that I simply will not buy if they are not in ebook, no matter what the price of the hardback or paperback, higher or lower. I have on a few occasions bought used or been given new a hardback or paperback, and wound up buying the ebook anyway.
So I really don't care what the hardback or paperback is selling for most of the time. And I think that the publishers grasp that. To some extent they are positioning ebooks over and against the other two kinds of books in terms of timing and pricing, but I think that the larger picture is that ebook pricing is seeking its own level in light of there being a lot of us who find the most important factor to be the ebook format itself.
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I agree with this entirely. I'm not really too concerned about the price of ebooks relative to their physical counterparts. I am paying to get access to the material, the packaging is simply a matter of convenience to me. Ebooks are more convenient.
The formatting of the ebooks is what concerns me the most. I want publishers to focus on making ebooks as well formatted and as widely distributed as physical books.