Quote:
Originally Posted by Lazybones
My pricing complaint has to do with the long tail of eBook publishing. I'm willing to pay top dollar for a new book from an author I like, but it takes a really long time for the price to drop. I was looking at Amazon for some older fantasy/sci-fi books (20-30 years since original publication, in some cases), and the publisher was still asking $5-8 for the eBook. I think that publishers need to start looking at the model that Steam pioneered for video games, where older items are extremely deeply discounted during occasional sales. I have read several stories that suggest they more than make up in volume what they lose in per-item price. There's a ton of stuff I would likely pick up if it was in the "impulse buy" range of a buck a title.
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I think the sellers are afraid that a lot of people will buy a lot of sci-fi or other classics cheap and their net sales will drop.
Games are a bit different, I think. Yes, a lot people buy a lot of old gems at Steam or GOG.com, but if we're talking AAA mainstream genre titles, modern games are obviously more attractive, if only for graphics and animation alone. Whereas books don't benefit that way from advances in technology, so the pressure from the older, well-established works is much stronger.