[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

from your remarks, Elfmark, I believe that you are the kind of reader who is satisfied with fan fic, Smashwords, Baen, and the stuff you can get in the "bargain bin" at Amazon and B&N (not that there's anything wrong with that). .For you , $10 per month is the max you would spend on books.

Not quite. I'm not "satisfied" with fanfic; I look for books to buy when I run out of fanfic novels by my favorite authors.

My ebook budget is shifting to about $20-50/month. But I want enough reading material to read constantly (3-5 novels/week), so price matters; the better bargain I get for my paid books by names I know, the less time I have to spend poking through the slushpile trying to figure out what's free that I'd enjoy. I read cheap books because I read constantly. (When they invent the cyber-implants that scroll text on the inside of one's eyelids, I'm so there.)

DRM matters rather more, and since Shatzkin's hypothetical subscription probably involves DRM, the pricing is all abstract to me.

For him, $50 per month seems fine, because this is what he normally spends on books).

Many people (who make more than $50k/year) would probably be happy to pay $50/month for a book subscription--but with a new delivery method, the price needs to be low enough to entice people who aren't sure they'd like it. $50/month is for people who *know* they'll enjoy it; $20/month will convince people to try it for a month or two. If they want to convince college students to try it, the rate will have to be low.

I think you two are outliers and the average "moderate to heavy" reader falls in between these extremes. From the numerous threads excoriating publishers for "unconscionably high" ebook prices, I suspect that you have a lot more company in this forum than Mr. Shatzkin in terms of buying habits.

I know what it takes to convert a pbook to an ebook. The *only* reason for prices equal to paperback, much less comparable to hardcover, is to attempt to push people into buying paper instead of digital copies.

However, you probably should not take your habits as the norm. After all, a helluva lot of folks bought and are buying Ms. Hillenbrands "Unbroken" ebook at $12.99 and above.

Then they don't need to offer a subscription package to those people; they're happy with current prices. I'm the customer they haven't figured out how to catch.

Currently, the Agency 6 are getting $0/month from me--someone who spends almost all her leisure time reading, likes multiple genres, enjoys short stories and mega-novels, and will read a 15-book series (if they're well-written, otherwise, probably not more than 2 or 3) in order to get context for the fanfic and filk.

Growing up, new books were mostly out of my budget; now, pbooks are out of my interest range. But I haven't slowed down my reading at all, and I throw substantial money at niche publishers who've made it easy and fun for me to buy ebooks from them. The Agency 6, who published a lot of the books I loved growing up, get no money from me. I no longer read their books, because they don't publish in a form accessible to me. (Saying, "you could read DRM books" is much like saying "you could read hardcovers." I could; it's too much hassle.)

I think there are a lot of folks out there who would be willing to do $15-30 per month for subscriptions. I expect we'll find out soon.

$15-30, sure. Depending on how many books & which books are available.

How do you propose to get publishers to go along with this--or will it be an indie/self-pub subscription arrangement?