OK, I'm sure everyone is eager for another 'fair price' thread.
I recently had to get rid of a large number of paper books. (7 boxes--spring cleaning; a roughly equal number to go) I took them down to a local used book store that has a close affiliation with a local charity to get a tax deduction and up my real-world karma. I surveyed the shelves in the store and found they sold most paperbacks for $1.50 and most hardbacks for $2.50. I evaluated my books at $2 per book, since I had a mix, and filled in the donation tax form.
On later reflection, I realized that was about how I assigned residual value to ebooks. If you think about it, the cost of production of a book isn't the right measure of the price difference between e and p. The real value difference is the ebook's lack of residual value, due to the licensing restrictions. It works for a lot of things, used cars, for an example.
Sure enough, I seldom buy an ebook until the price for a new ebook is a dollar or two below the price of the paper version. Dismal science works, bitches!
My suspicion is still that Jeff Bezos[1] was trying to set a long term _floor_ for ebook prices with his famous $9.99, not a ceiling. The publishers may someday wish they'd listened.
Regards,
Jack Tingle
[1] Bezos personally, and Amazon institutionally, understands perfectly the issues with ebook values and prices. He laid them out clearly when the first Kindle was introduced in a 2007 Newsweek interview. It's still worth a read.
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/11/17/t...f-reading.html
"...; the $9.99 charge for new releases and best sellers is Amazon's answer. ... Bezos explains that it's only fair to charge less for e-books because you can't give them as gifts, and due to restrictive antipiracy software, you can't lend them out or resell them."