Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
I read this repeatedly -- it's just the producer's greed. I'm prepared to face the wrath of MR, but isn't it just as valid a statement to say that it is the consumer's greed to demand lower pricing?
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To me, the question is "lower than what?"
I read 30-40 books a year, probably. Before I bought my Kindle, most of my book purchases were paperbacks, $7.99 retail, usually discounted to $6-7 by Amazon or with my B&N discount card. I also bought a good number used books at $2 or less (with trade-in credits). The very occasional hardback I bought was from Costco, maybe $15 or so, or from the SciFi Book Club (usually omnibus editions of 2 or more titles that were less than $20). If I had to guess, I would say the mean price I paid for books was $5 each, with the median probably around $7.
So now I'm being told that I'm unreasonable and a greedy consumer if I want to continue to spend about the same amount of money for the same number of books. Here are some things I can't do with ebooks:
1) Count on
consistent good quality in terms of formatting and presentation
2) Trade the books in for credit when I'm done
3) Give them away, loan them, or share them with someone else
4) Have a guarantee that they'll still be readable in 5 or 10 years
Now in turn I get to carry my whole library with me and take a lot of books on vacation without adding 20 lbs. to my luggage. That has value for me, and I don't discount it.
But I don't appreciate being told that I should expect to be spending $15 a book on every book, or that I'm greedy for expecting the same kind of value I got from print books.