Quote:
Originally Posted by kazbates
Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks? I agree that the prices are too high considering the publishers aren't paying for printing and distributing, but I would buy the books anyway for the sheer convenience of buying books at home, receiving them instantly on my computer and then reading them wherever I go. . . .
|
I didn't buy (ask for as a Christmas gift to be technically correct
) my Sony Reader to save money on ebooks. Truthfully, at the time I was unaware of the DRM problems, which might well have made me rethink asking for such an expensive gift.
I asked for the Reader because I liked the portability and because for me there are two categories of books: (1) books that I want to add to my library, my permanent collection, and (2) those that I want to read but do not want to add to my library. Naively, I assumed that ebooks would be less expensive than pbooks, when the truth is that because of DRM ebooks are signifcantly more expensive than pbooks.
However, I do buy ebooks but with caution. That is, I will not buy a fiction ebook unless I am already familiar with the author and like the author; or the description is intriguing and the ebook, even with DRM, costs less than $6; or the ebook is free.
Today is a good example. I had never read anything by Fiona McIntosh but HarperCollins gave away
Odalisque and yesterday I finally got around to reading it. I found it so good, that I finished it in 1 day and this morning bought from the Sony store volumes 2 and 3 of the series, which I will start shortly. I would never have bought any of McIntosh's books absent that free one because of DRM and pricing.
So there is some connection between buying a reading device and expecting to spend less on ebooks -- at least for me -- but only because of DRM. Absent DRM, knowing that I own the ebook like I own a pbook, then equivalent pricing would be less a problem, althoug I would expect the pricing to be equivalent to the paperback version, not the hardcover version.