Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Which suggests, does it not, that people are generally happy with "the system" as it stands? I know that you consider that customers are being "gouged", but I certainly don't. I'm paying an awful lot less for books now than I was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I bought all my books from bookshops where they were sold at full price, which was generally £6.99 or £7.99 (US$11-13) for a paperback; today it's rare that I pay £5 for an ebook - most of the books I buy cost £3-4.
Are there $20 ebooks around? Yes, certainly there are. But, at least in the area of fiction, they are almost all newly-published books that are only out in hardback, and the ebook price falls dramatically once the paperback is released. There's nothing wrong with charging a high price for a new product: there are people who are willing to pay more to read a book NOW rather than in a year's time, and it's a legitimate business strategy to make money from such people. In exactly the same way, I know that if I wait a year, a DVD of a newly-released film which costs £15 today will probably be available for £5.
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And those same publishers didn't offer their books for free for even one day either. I've gotten I don't know how many books during days they were offered for free at Amazon or other sites.