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Spellbot 5000 · 05-18-2008, 03:07 AM

So I'm fairly new to ebooks and ereaders in general. Lulled into complacency by the low prices of Kindle book prices, I jumped right into the whole scene with a Cybook Gen3, and I'm now completely taken aback by the prices on books anywhere approaching new.

Since I'm primarily a SF reader, my early purchases were a lot of sci-fi classics by the masters; Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and their contemporaries. These were cheap titles, and I thought the future looked rosy for ebooks. Now that I've started to look for some more recent titles, I'm completely floored that I'm seeing prices of $20+. Double-u, Tee, Eff?!? I can understand if it's a brand new book just out in hardcover, but hardcovers that have been out a year, or even books now in paperback go for the same damn price?!?

The first book I was looking for was Spook Country by Gibson. $20 at most sites. The book is out in bloody paperback for $10, and you can still get the damn hardcover for $12! You know, physical books that they had to destroy trees to make and get a whole manufacturing and shipping process to get in peoples hands. And I have to pay almost double for a manuscript file that was run through an ebook creator program? What is going on here?

I've read several threads where people have said that the ebook retailers drag their feet when it comes to updating prices for current books, but the problem seems more endemic than that. Do companies like BooksonBoard, Fictionwise, or Mobipocket respond to questions/requests for lower prices on books where the physical editions are already far cheaper than the digital versions?

05-18-2008, 03:07 AM	#1
Spellbot 5000 Connoisseur Posts: 58 Karma: 732 Join Date: May 2008 Device: Cybook Gen3	The abysmal pricing of ebooks... So I'm fairly new to ebooks and ereaders in general. Lulled into complacency by the low prices of Kindle book prices, I jumped right into the whole scene with a Cybook Gen3, and I'm now completely taken aback by the prices on books anywhere approaching new. Since I'm primarily a SF reader, my early purchases were a lot of sci-fi classics by the masters; Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and their contemporaries. These were cheap titles, and I thought the future looked rosy for ebooks. Now that I've started to look for some more recent titles, I'm completely floored that I'm seeing prices of $20+. Double-u, Tee, Eff?!? I can understand if it's a brand new book just out in hardcover, but hardcovers that have been out a year, or even books now in paperback go for the same damn price?!? The first book I was looking for was Spook Country by Gibson. $20 at most sites. The book is out in bloody paperback for $10, and you can still get the damn hardcover for $12! You know, physical books that they had to destroy trees to make and get a whole manufacturing and shipping process to get in peoples hands. And I have to pay almost double for a manuscript file that was run through an ebook creator program? What is going on here? I've read several threads where people have said that the ebook retailers drag their feet when it comes to updating prices for current books, but the problem seems more endemic than that. Do companies like BooksonBoard, Fictionwise, or Mobipocket respond to questions/requests for lower prices on books where the physical editions are already far cheaper than the digital versions?