[Timboli]

Originally Posted by gmw

So, despite the fact that I would characterise most of your posts on this thread as complaining that the price of ebooks is unfair, you are not actually expecting our system of economics to produce fairness in pricing. Okay, although it's not the way I interpreted your previous posts. And we still have a gaping hole: what is fair? (And why are you a better arbiter of it than publishers?)

Well, it sounds like you have skimmed most of the conversation here, going by a few of your comments. For starters I have never said all ebooks are unfairly priced, just a good number of them. And a good number are fairly priced. There is a discrepancy occurring.

And while there are certainly complaints within on both sides, this topic is really about discussing about the situation and various aspects of publisher behavior and claims etc.

No-one, especially me, has said I am a better arbiter. I am only voicing the concerns that many feel and the contradictions, and putting a spotlight on things, looking at the past and so on.

What is fair, is that ebooks which cost a lot less to produce and provide, should cost less than their physical versions.

Nowhere that I can recall are we discussing an overall book price. And briefly, we did look at word count and quality, but as you say, and I agree, hard to quantify. So nowhere am I discussing what any author deserves for the book they wrote ... only discrepancy between ebook and physical book prices.

You say "some things are bleeding obvious"; well, I'm missing the bleeding obvious. How can a fair price for any book be determined that isn't - for the most part - quite arbitrary?

Well, you say arbitrary, and I personally agree, but publishers certainly have their formulas, to quantify. They are all very mysterious really. But once again, I am not talking book price overall, just what is fair to pay for the ebook version.

If you have a cost established for a physical book, and then add up all the costs of providing that to the end reader, that an ebook does not incur, then the cost of the ebook does become bleeding obvious.

Cents per word might seem tempting, but I have been happy to pay hardback prices for some authors, but wouldn't accept freebies from some others.

Some reasonable income for the author and publisher might sound good, but there will always be some books that are more popular than others, and popularity is not related to the amount of work that went into production - so how can that be fair?

Can't disagree with you there, but not what I am discussing.

The big publishers probably come closest because they have the benchmark of paper books from which to start, and the advantages of scale to provide cost effectiveness across many books even when some sell better than others. And they also have a long history over which they have learned what readers in general will and will not accept (and we're talking all readers, not just the select few ebook specialists here on MR).

Now you have changed track a bit.
As I said earlier, there is no real evidence that they have been doing the best thing all along. Certainly they have done enough of something to have some success for a good number of authors, but many mistakes and troubling biases have occurred along the way. And many have failed spectacularly.

If readers (as averaged by what the publishers see, but you don't) will accept the price then I suspect that is about as close as we're ever going to get to fair (but isn't really) - after all, they don't have to pay that price. Books are luxury, people can choose not to pay new release prices; it should not even be a hardship, it's not like is a shortage of public domain books. Current prices seem to offer strong evidence that enough people think the prices are fair (or close enough to fair) to sustain those prices.

And note that even with that being true, I still say the result is arbitrary. What readers are willing to spend on new books is partly dependent on what else is available (video, music, social networking, public domain books), and how much free income they have (which is dependent on their level of debt etc. etc.). There is nothing in here anywhere that says anything about the length of the book, the quality of the writing, the editing, the cover and so on. The price of a book is independent of the book's production effort. Fairness simply isn't part of the equation.

Refer to my comments above.
I cannot argue, for the reasons you say and other factors, about what a fair price for a book is. I can only look at what publishers have decided is fair for a physical book, look at the law of averages and then look at how much less an ebook should cost, which is quantifiable.

The cost of an ebook should not be arbitrary in relation to a physical book.