Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
They don't. Can you give an example of an ebook that costs as much as the list price of a hardback or paperback? If a particular retailer chooses to discount a paper book, that's nothing to do with the publisher.
I buy what many people would consider to be a lot of ebooks - 3 or 4 a week - almost all of which are from mainstream publishers, and typically pay about half the list price of the printed book, which I consider to be entirely reasonable. Eg, my most recent purchase was "Monk's Hood" by Ellis Peters. List price for the paperback: £8.99; Kindle price: £3.99.
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This is basically what I would have to deal with if I bought all my books on Amazon and logged in with my actual, correct territory - it's a rare case that the ebook, as sold by Amazon, is cheaper than the list price of the paperback:
http://i.imgur.com/BXQPVI9.png (URL goes to an image, which is too large to be inserted directly here)
In other words, this is a random example of a popular urban fantasy author's not-extremely-new books - for two of them, the Kindle version costs $10.30 for me, with the list price of the paperback being $7.99, and for the other two, Kindle book is $7.99, equal to the list price of the paperback.
Yes, if I bought the paperback, I'd also have to count in shipping (and on Amazon - any variety of Amazon - shipping costs for books are horrendous, which is why I haven't bought a paper book on Amazon for years - on BookDepository, each of those paperbacks would cost me well under €7 with free shipping though), but it
is an example of how at least to some of us, ebooks
are more expensive than the list price of new paperbacks.