Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The lack of legit loaning/resale of ebooks is working toward re-establishing access to books as something for the upper classes, or at least removing access from the most impoverished classes of people. The first sacrifice in the ebook-vs-paper publishing wars will be mmpb's--and suddenly, Billy will have a lot fewer chances to find a copy at a yard sale for fifty cents.
I don't mind waiting for lower-priced secondhand books, but I'm baffled that authors & publishers seem to think this is a *good* thing for them. They don't get royalties on those sales. Why not release $5 ebooks instead of telling me to read something they don't get paid for?
I think a lot of the price debates is big publishers not realizing how many book readers *never* paid full price for books, and would be happy to by ebooks at the prices they'd been paying for paper--which had no connection to the prices on the cover.
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Yeah. They don't understand that they are attempting to do exactly the same thing as the music industry did. Except the saving grace of the music industry has become $1 tracks you can buy individually - even cheaper than a used CD if you only want one track - so they had somewhere, at least, to backpeddle to.
The price on backlist ebooks should be more in line with the used market. Only huge ebook fans buy a backlist ebook for $8 that they can't share when they could get a paperback for $2 at the local used book store - or a penny + $2.99 shipping from Amazon marketplace. Or, even cheaper - torrent for free a copy that you can share across devices and accounts.
You think that a dropping price over time strategy would come into play for ebooks, in an effort to make money on those that would simply buy used. Somehow they seem to expect that some sort of magic inherent in ebooks will make people pay 4x what it costs to buy a used paperback.