Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Wow, that's even a step further than those who think that owning the physical copy entitles them to a free digital copy. So there's a get out of jail free card on pirated versions of any physical book I've ever owned? Whee! Time to get cracking. |
Well, first of all it seems to me Amazon could make ebooks cheaper as it is extremely cheap to make copies of ebooks because computers are good at iterations and are general purpose machines.
However, I think our use cases are different since you read fiction and I read non-fiction especially when it comes to technology. I will give you an example. In the tech field 16 years is an eternity and there is a book called Code Reading : the OpenSource Perspective by Diomidis Spinellis that was published in 2003. The physical book on Barnes and Noble is more expensive than the ebook version which is absurd especially if I owned the physical copy beforehand once. Even on Amazon the ebook is only 3 dollars cheaper which is crazy.
For instance, on Amazon the cost is $46.60 for the paperback and the ebook is $43.11. That is crazy talk.
This is even crazier talk on Barnes and Noble (which ecosystem I use primarily) :
The physical copy is $49.53 and the ebook copy is $52.49
That is insane !
I think they charge higher prices because these books are technical in nature and not very popular because of that. However, the larger issue is brought into stark relief here with these kinds of books. Amazon, Kobo and Barnes and Noble can afford to make ebooks cheaper because the process of generating new books on a computer is extremely cheap and simple compared to manufacturing physical paper books. They are basically ripping people off.