Quote:
Originally Posted by Deskisamess
Ebooks are not a byproduct or fad. They offer many benefits over print books. Expecting them to be priced lower is unrealistic. Many users, myself for one, are willing to pay more for a digital book. It is worth more to me, because it is better.
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Expecting them to be priced lower is unrealistic??? Passing on lower costs to the consumer is just so last century.
Given that the production costs of an ebook are lower than a paper book, I have trouble believing you made that statement with a straight face. It's easy enough to find information on the costs of producing a book though those tend to be small run costs. The articles I've read on publishing are pretty consistent in stating the production costs of an book (proofreading, editing, cover design and formatting) are the same up to the point where the ink meets the paper. At that point, ebook costs stop while paper books costs continue for each and every copy. No printing/binding costs, no shipping costs, no warehousing and taxes on inventory (anyone remember ordering Ace books from the form in the back of many of their books?), no returns of unsold copies, no cost difference between producing 1,000,000 copies or 1,000 copies, no need for "if you bought this book without a cover" notices.
While the folks at Baen increased their royalties to authors by 25% on ebook sales when they increased their prices after their deal with Amazon to sell their books through the Kindle store and indie authors get 70% after Amazon's 30% commision, I haven't seen any mention of other publishers increasing authors' royalties on ebook sales.
I am willing to pay for my ereading habit but please don't expect me to believe that an ebook needs to be priced higher than the paperback version of the same book for any reason other than simple corporate greed. Not to mention I can resell, give away, trade, loan, gift, leave in my will, etc. dead tree books while the horrifying thought of doing the same with ebooks brings out crowds of lawyers. The suggested workaround of giving your Amazon/Kobo/whatever account passwords to your heirs and forgetting to mention that you are dead is well, a bit unattractive -- that little envelope with your account information and passwords needs continual updating as you change your passwords on a regular basis. You are changing your passwords regularly, aren't you?