Well stated. I live in Japan now. Any books that are imported are really high in price; usually 1500-2500 yen or more at times. I am a ardent fan of ebook reading since i "converted" this past year. I have to agree, until the cost of ebooks come down to a reasonable price, the market will be slow. However, As a huge fan of Literature, history, science, and philosophy;both old and new, there are heaps and heaps of books to get for free on the net at sites such as
PG.
Quote:
Originally Posted by binzer
I don't mind paying more than I should for books since I'm used to it (especially being Canadian) but I don't really understand why any e-book should be almost the same price as the real thing. E-books are literally next to free for publishers to distribute, and it's essentially a way for them to get giant piles of money for nothing. Printing, binding, and shipping books is expensive, and that's what consumers usually pay for. Data is next to free.
They obviously can't make prices so low that they undermine the paper market, but even if they did undermine the paper market it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for anyone but paper bookstores (and I'm assuming that the publishers are more self-interested). Even if they halved the current e-book prices they would probably make more profit than they do on paper books, and I think they would get a lot more people switching to e-books (thus increasing their profit). People who already buy e-books would probably also be willing to buy a lot more, and become interested or hooked on authors they may not have otherwise tried.
I think one main reason that many people don't buy e-readers is because they can't justify the cost when they're only going to save a couple dollars on their next book. If the savings were a lot more obvious I think we'd have more of an e-book revolution.
Sorry if this was off topic...the title of the thread got me going.
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