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Katsunami · 11-17-2013, 02:35 PM

What I want to pay depends heavily on the book itself, but I must say that buying ebooks has greatly spoiled me. In the Netherlands, an English paperback version of a normal 400 page book will cost somewhere between €7.99 and €11.99 ($10.79 to $16.19), depending on the age of the book and the "greatness" of the author.

When buying ebooks, I can often pay half the price of a paperback, which will bring down the price of the more expensive books to €5.99 ($8.09.) When shopping around among different EPUB stores, it's not uncommon that I can find the same book for a price of "Euro == Dollar", making the book cost €4.45 ($5.99).

So, €4.45 / $5.99 is the highest price I often pay for new, somewhat high-profile (fantasy) books. Sometimes the price is $6.99. Most of the time the price will be reduced to less because of some sort of coupon or sale.

Some books have to be very cheap for me to buy them. For example, Forgotten Realms fantasy released by Wizards of the Coast. WotC is the Harlequin of Fantasy: you can keep reading all your life long without ever reading anything else. If I can't get FR books very cheap (under €2.95 / $3.99 or even less), then I don't want them, except maybe for some very particular specials.

Other books can be quite expensive. For example, I bought Yoshikawa's "Taiko" and "Musashi" in the 50% Kobo sale a few weeks ago, and they would normally be $15.99 (€11.84) a piece. The sale cut the prices in half, but even without a sale, I would have bought them, because these are books 1200+ pages long, they're classics, and they're personal favorites, not to mention that they normally can't be bought outside the US.

That last statement does mean that I will jump geo-restrictions to lower the price of a book further, or to buy a book that I cannot normally buy.

There you have it; the price I'm willing to pay for a book is quite broad, depending on the book itself. In any case, I'm saving huge amounts of money buying ebooks as compared to buying paperbacks, not to mention saving enormous amounts of space and waiting time for shipment.

That said, the library is useless for me. Only the very high-profile bestsellers are in English in Dutch libraries; other books are either translated, or not there at all. If there would be a way to borrow ebooks from an English library from the Netherlands, I would shift all my "nice to read, don't need to have"-reading to library books. All but a few of the Forgotten Realms books would be an instant candidate for such a shift.

11-17-2013, 02:35 PM	#48
Katsunami Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,111 Karma: 34000001 Join Date: Mar 2008 Device: KPW1, KA1	What I want to pay depends heavily on the book itself, but I must say that buying ebooks has greatly spoiled me. In the Netherlands, an English paperback version of a normal 400 page book will cost somewhere between €7.99 and €11.99 ($10.79 to $16.19), depending on the age of the book and the "greatness" of the author. When buying ebooks, I can often pay half the price of a paperback, which will bring down the price of the more expensive books to €5.99 ($8.09.) When shopping around among different EPUB stores, it's not uncommon that I can find the same book for a price of "Euro == Dollar", making the book cost €4.45 ($5.99). So, €4.45 / $5.99 is the highest price I often pay for new, somewhat high-profile (fantasy) books. Sometimes the price is $6.99. Most of the time the price will be reduced to less because of some sort of coupon or sale. Some books have to be very cheap for me to buy them. For example, Forgotten Realms fantasy released by Wizards of the Coast. WotC is the Harlequin of Fantasy: you can keep reading all your life long without ever reading anything else. If I can't get FR books very cheap (under €2.95 / $3.99 or even less), then I don't want them, except maybe for some very particular specials. Other books can be quite expensive. For example, I bought Yoshikawa's "Taiko" and "Musashi" in the 50% Kobo sale a few weeks ago, and they would normally be $15.99 (€11.84) a piece. The sale cut the prices in half, but even without a sale, I would have bought them, because these are books 1200+ pages long, they're classics, and they're personal favorites, not to mention that they normally can't be bought outside the US. That last statement does mean that I will jump geo-restrictions to lower the price of a book further, or to buy a book that I cannot normally buy. There you have it; the price I'm willing to pay for a book is quite broad, depending on the book itself. In any case, I'm saving huge amounts of money buying ebooks as compared to buying paperbacks, not to mention saving enormous amounts of space and waiting time for shipment. That said, the library is useless for me. Only the very high-profile bestsellers are in English in Dutch libraries; other books are either translated, or not there at all. If there would be a way to borrow ebooks from an English library from the Netherlands, I would shift all my "nice to read, don't need to have"-reading to library books. All but a few of the Forgotten Realms books would be an instant candidate for such a shift. Last edited by Katsunami; 11-17-2013 at 02:48 PM.