Quote:
Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim
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.
(snippage)
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.
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Using your argument, I should be able to buy my own copy of the Avengers:Endgame movie for a nickel, right? Because computer copies of digital products are cheap and easy to make?
Regardless of the cost of producing it in the first place?
Extremely complex books are
very expensive to create as eBooks. It's not like a DIY romance novel--type in Word, apply styles, upload and kablammo, you have a serviceable, if not outstanding, eBook. You start talking about a "Yadda-yadda for Dummies" book or a complex non-fiction book or textbook and the production of the ebook alone--never mind the print layout--can and does cost
thousands. Surely you expect that the publisher is entitled to recover his costs? What, should he charge the first buyer $2K and then sell the rest at a quarter?
The only way publishers can afford to put out books like that is by estimating the sales and amortizing their costs (and any hopeful profit) over the number of approximated sales. The expense of copying the files plays into it not at all, I'd assume.
And as Issy rightly states, the stores (Amazon, B&N, etc.) have almost
nothing to do with pricing. It's set by the retailers and yes, of course, we all remember the fight way back when between Amazon and the BPHs, but it was
Amazon that was on the side of making them
cheaper.
As she also says--you don't like the pricing, don't buy them, right? Like any other product.
Hitch