Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Because
1) The ebook costs substantially less to produce and distribute; pricing it the same as the pbook is an open declaration that production costs are irrelevant.
It doesn't matter how much people insist that the "real" price is "whatever the market will bear;" traditionally, what the market will bear is strongly influenced by material costs and scarcity. Cubic zirconia are only distinguishable from diamonds with a microscope; there's no reason for them to be cheaper--but they are.
2) Publishers insist that ebooks aren't sold with the same rights as pbooks--that, actually, they're not sold at all; they're licensed. Movie rentals cost less than movie purchases; why shouldn't book rentals--with an open-ended due date of "whenever we think you shouldn't have it anymore, or when your OS gets upgraded to something that can't read it"--cost less?
3) Ebooks are often lower-quality than pbooks: they often lack high-resolution cover art, functional tables of contents, or *proofread text.*
4) No resale market. No hand-it-to-a-friend-when-I'm-done. No sharing it with the local book club. No donating it to a library. (How many people treat pbooks as "when I'm done reading this for the last time, I'll just throw it in the shredder?" Which is apparently how we're most publishers expect us to treat ebooks.)
5) Limited research uses... hard to photocopy a few pages and use them for classwork; annotation ability strictly limited by software & hardware.
6) No guarantee that, if the buyer is reasonably careful, it'll still be readable in a generation.
Hardcover books last decades, sometimes centuries. Ebooks can't make that claim. Ebooks are marketed as limited-use disposable entertainment; it's not unreasonable to expect them to be priced equivalent to mass-market paperbacks--or less, because the production costs are lower.
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AGAIN, I am not arguing the overall ebook pricing.
BUT if a new paperback sells for $9.99 both in ebook and pbook format, WHY would you expect any book that is currently in print as a pbook, to be sold for substantially less as an ebook than the pbook?
The post I am discussing is based on the idea that the book was written a long time ago, therefore should sell for less as an ebook, even though it is currently in print as a pbook. Even though all other ebooks that have a current printing in pbook, sell for about the same price as the pbook.
Different arguement for different circumstances.
I am not disagreeing that ebooks SHOULD sell for less, but they DON'T.