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Originally Posted by THE TERMINATOR
Oh come on the books are being read at the library for free ( I know the library pays to lease them) but they don't pay money per read. And what the heck is the difference of buying a used book and pirating an E-book?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
There is only one used copy, and while you can sell it multiple times it cannot be read by more than one person at a time. An ebook can be copied an infinite number of times with ease.
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Used book sales are the real target of the publishers. If there is one area that I am willing to bet the entire industry loathes it's the used market. Heck, I bet they are even considering targeting library "take one, leave one" paperback exchange racks.
But raising prices along with the ever dropping price of readers makes zero sense. Even if the cost of entry into the ebook market for a customer keeps dropping the fact that a potential customers sees even the ebook version 3x-10x more costly than a used book including the shipping the customer is going to feel cheated for buying new-retail. No idea how to address the matter but I know for me for the most part, if the ebook is over $6 I am not going to buy it as a recreational read.
Another comparison is if you buy properly in an Audible account you can actually buy an audiobook version of a title for LESS than the ebook price. Now someone tell me which has a higher cost overhead? And really, if more people listened to modern audiobooks I am willing to bet their preference will lean toward the audio version if the prices are similar to ebooks.
So, I guess I just don't understand the pricing model for books. Not when a version where the production overhead has to be at least 10x greater than the ebook version yet is priced very close to the ebook version when all discounts are applied and the buyer spends wisely as sales/promotions come along. I still think if it was possible to get the two different publishers to agree that bundled ebook with audiobook versions would be a real winning option for a LOT of people and get them to buy a lot more of both options.