Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
I don't think the price relationship is all that tangential. There are plenty of books out there that were available as mass market paperbacks and the ebook price was about the same. Then the paper book was made available only as a trade paperback and what do you know? The ebook price increased.
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Perhaps the prices are similar because they’re reacting to the same changes in the market? I’m not saying there’s no influence because you do have to consider the substitutability of the two, but it’s not necessarily true that there’s a cause and effect here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ownedbycats
With a paper book, you're buying the book itself. But with an eBook, you're only buying the license to be permitted to read the book. They can literally revoke it at any time for any reason whatsoever with no recourse, or put DRM on it that depending on the region you might not be allowed to legally strip.
If a publisher sold you a paper book, but said "we can magically teleport it away at any time, sucks to be you" that wouldn't be acceptable to sell that at the same price as a non-magically-teleporting book. but when it's a digital form it is acceptable?
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They are not the same thing. Unless and until people accept that, they’re going to be arguing from false assumptions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rkomar
Oh for goodness sakes! The argument is "Ebooks are cheaper to produce than paper books, so they should be cheaper in price." You can argue about why it doesn't work that way, but you shouldn't be casting shade on those making that argument. It's a reasonable stand.
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No. You can make an argument that ebooks are cheaper to produce so they
could be cheaper in price, but that doesn’t mean that they
should be. As has been said over and over, people would like them to be cheaper, so they continue to make up specious reasons to support that. I’m not even saying that there might not be good reasons to argue for cheaper ebooks based on demand elasticity, but cost of production isn’t it.