Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
IThe bottom line, eBooks are much, much cheaper to produce than "real" books and they should cost less (and and did cost less, and would continue costing less) in a non-colluding world.
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They do cost less. Amazon imprint e-books, KDP e-books, and even many smaller tradpub e-books cost much less pretty well across the board. Even some agency e-books cost much less. Without competition, sellers are free to set prices at any level they wish, and can operate on very large margins. However, where healthy competition is present, the costs become very relevant as margins are forced downwards. The break-even price for sale of an e-book and the price to make any particular margin is of course lower than for the equivalent print book. If you sell only e-books, this doesn't really impact upon you. If you sell both e-books and print books, it doesn't matter to you so long as there is no or very limited competition. If you sell e-books and print books, and face strong competition, you also face the problem that your e-book prices may result in the cannibalisation of your print book sales. This is of course a highly relevant consideration in pricing your e-books.
Unfortunately, so far as sales are concerned, it seems that many people who will not pay a premium for newly released e-books will still buy the e-book at a reduced price later. This means that sellers are free to exploit the different levels of demand. They will take the hardcover money and the top priced e-book money first, as they always have. They are now experimenting with picking up the market at various lower price points by discounting later when demand at the higher price points have been exhausted.