Quote:
Originally Posted by Amothea
I think pricing ebooks from 2-6 dollars is fair. 6 being for the newer books, and the lower price would be for older/out of print.
Most people, including me would prefer just paying the 2-6 dollar range because going through the darknet and downloading the same book 10 times trying to find a decent copy takes a lot of time and at this point I have more money than time. But to save 12- 22 dollars, I've been spending my time at the darknet instead.
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The question is whether the $2-$6 range you cite is feasible. Offhand, I suspect not.
Consider what happens when a book is bought for publication. An editor reads the manuscript, and decides it's a book her house can sell. She negotiates with the author or author's agent over the contract, and offers an advance against royalties for the book rights. How big the advance will be will be determined by how many copies of the book the publisher thinks it can sell. A book perceived as a potential best seller will get a much better deal than a first novel from a new writer.
Once a deal is struck and a manuscript is accepted, the manuscript must be line edited by the editor, who will issue a note requesting revisions designed to improve the book. An Art Director must design a cover and commision art for it, and a book designer must create the typography and interior layout specifications. The revised manuscript must be copy edited and proofread, and then marked up and typeset and put into a form that can be handed to a printer to make plates and print the book.
We have the advance paid for the book, the fee paid for the cover art, plus the time of the editor who acquired and edited it,the lawyer who worked on the contract, the Art Director and Book Designer, the copy editor, the proofreader, and the DTP person who created the files for the printer, and we have an allocated share of the overhead of the publisher, covering things like office space rental, utilities and phone service.
And all of this is
before the book is actually printed, bound, warehoused, or distributed.
Yes, we can expect ebooks to be cheaper than pbooks, because they
don't have manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution costs, but we are unlikely to see them
that much cheaper. The sort of cheap prices I see wished for seem to presume that either the up front costs of acquiring and preparing a book are a lot lower than they likely are, or that a cheaper ebook can sell a large enough volume of copies to make up for the lower price.
That presumes that price is the main reason people don't buy more books. It's
a factor, but I doubt it's the only factor, or the most important factor.
Books compete for the reader's discretionary
time, and you have to consider what the reader might be doing
instead of reading a book.
Personally, time is my biggest limitation. I have a substantial backlog of both paper and electronic books in my To Be Read stack. When I buy books, my biggest decision is not "Can I afford it?". It's "When will I have a chance to
read it?. Some books get put back because they aren't compelling enough to merit buying at the moment, when there are other books I'd rather read.
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Dennis