Quote:
Originally Posted by CallOfCth'reader
Those two unconnected paragraphs pretty much summed up a thought that popped into my head as I was reading this thread: smaller prices can mean more sales, because there is often less thought put into purchases that don't cost much.
My sister and niece regularly buy ringtones and screensavers for their mobile/cell phones. The price is about £2 ($3-ish), and most of the time the attraction lasts a very short time, before the next is purchased. The costs are small enough that it is seen by them as an acceptable impulse buy.
I would view e-books in the same vein: if the cost was low enough, then I'd happily snap up copies of books (whether they are ones I have already read, or new ones) with the feeling that I could read them whenever I chose to, and I hadn't really lost much if I never got round to reading them at all.
I would expect to pay a higher premium for a newly released e-book, but I would then (as now, with paper books) decide whether I want it badly enough to pay the higher price or wait until it drops.
The aesthetic value of an item also affects how much I would pay for an item: I'd happily pay £100 for a specially bound edition of Lord of the Rings, but I'm not going to pay £15 for what is essentially a text file just so I can stick it on my e-reader. I'd rather buy a paper copy of the book (which would also be cheaper than £15), and *gulp* destroy it to produce an e-book from it. At least that way there is a larger chain of people that have benefited from me buying the paper book.
As for books that I don't value as highly as LotR, I wouldn't bother buying them again in e-book format unless it was at the lower 'throwaway' price.
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A good example of this is the app store on iphone, i buy lots of apps for 70p $.99 or even £1.79 or $2.99 etc but have never bought anything costing £30 or $40 and probably wouldnt but I easily pend £30 a mont on apps sometimes.
look at the only ebook on the appstore hot section(not made up by sales this but by apple) it is supposed to come with awful software to actually read the book, Lee Childs - Nothing to lose costs £7.49!!! over $10 its ridiculously more than the paperback.
And currently has 2!! reviews both of 1 star, now if random house released this for £2.99 with decent reading software they would in my opinion easily sell more than x2.5 copies more and potentially create a lot of new lee child readers.
But no they wouldnt do that, why would they.
It does make you wonder who they have working in marketing...