MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

hpulley · 01-01-2012, 08:33 AM

Wouldn't it be great if all ebooks were free or 0.99? For today maybe but who would write more ebooks tomorrow?

Price and cost are separate. The price is what people are willing to pay. Obviously, you can raise your profit margin by reducing your costs or raising prices. Price it too high and sales can drop. Drive costs too low and quality can suffer which can also hurt sales. ebooks and emusic have no or very low per-sale costs but the development costs are pretty much the same whether or not you have a physical manufacturing run.

Consumers expect to have savings in manufacturing passed onto them, so they think ebooks should be cheaper and say publishers are profiting but it shouldn't really change the price they are willing to pay.

Music sellers say CDs are worth more as the sound quality is higher, no tape hiss or record crackles and they don't wear out like LPs or cassettes. ebook pages won't go yellow like my old pulp fiction paperbacks, won't be dog eared and sweat stained while reading so again the argument can be made that you are getting more and thus should pay more. You can change font face anx size on the fly so there is no need to repurchase books in large print sizes as you age. You can search ebooks, access them from multiple readers, etc.

Perhaps most worrying for publishers, anything digital can be copied for free with some effort. That leads some to believe that any price is too high, should be free. After all, books are just words on a page so how expensive can they be to make? ebooks aren't even that, they're just transient on/off pixels on a display, here one moment and then gone with a press or swipe.

01-01-2012, 08:33 AM	#525
hpulley Addict Posts: 288 Karma: 29760 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Vox, Playbook32	Wouldn't it be great if all ebooks were free or 0.99? For today maybe but who would write more ebooks tomorrow? Price and cost are separate. The price is what people are willing to pay. Obviously, you can raise your profit margin by reducing your costs or raising prices. Price it too high and sales can drop. Drive costs too low and quality can suffer which can also hurt sales. ebooks and emusic have no or very low per-sale costs but the development costs are pretty much the same whether or not you have a physical manufacturing run. Consumers expect to have savings in manufacturing passed onto them, so they think ebooks should be cheaper and say publishers are profiting but it shouldn't really change the price they are willing to pay. Music sellers say CDs are worth more as the sound quality is higher, no tape hiss or record crackles and they don't wear out like LPs or cassettes. ebook pages won't go yellow like my old pulp fiction paperbacks, won't be dog eared and sweat stained while reading so again the argument can be made that you are getting more and thus should pay more. You can change font face anx size on the fly so there is no need to repurchase books in large print sizes as you age. You can search ebooks, access them from multiple readers, etc. Perhaps most worrying for publishers, anything digital can be copied for free with some effort. That leads some to believe that any price is too high, should be free. After all, books are just words on a page so how expensive can they be to make? ebooks aren't even that, they're just transient on/off pixels on a display, here one moment and then gone with a press or swipe. Last edited by hpulley; 01-01-2012 at 08:37 AM.