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Originally Posted by wgrimm
That may be how the publisher determines the suggested retail price, but the market determines actual selling price. And what I think is going on is that these publishers still don't get e-book pricing. Lots of wishful thinking going on.
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Pricing hinges on three factors:
1. How much does the object cost to make? That imposes a lower limit - if you want to stay in business, you don't charge less than your Cost Of Goods Sold.
2. How many of whatever it is do you expect to sell? The more you sell, the larger a base over which you can allocate your overhead, and the cheaper you can price, given factor 1.
3. How much do you think the customer will be
willing to pay? You charge what you think the market will bear. Sometimes you're wrong. But in technical books, price is usually not the most important factor in the purchase decision.
I'm a computer geek, sysadmin variety. I assume books I buy relevant to my interest will be relatively expensive. But my decision will be based on which book on the particular topic I think best covers the topic. I won't buy a cheaper volume simply
because it's cheaper, if I don't feel the quality is there.
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Prices will either be set at something reasonable- which is probably less than $10 per book, or people won't buy it. Or they will pirate it- tech books are widely distributed on the newsgroups and the web.
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Reread my original post. It may not be
possible to price particular volumes at $10/book or less if you expect to stay in business. You aren't going to sell enough copies, because the market for technical titles may not be that big.
And yes, they get pirated to newsgroups and the web. But I think you'll find the majority of buyers do pay for the books. First, they are often getting them through part of a corporate deal (my last employer had a corporate account with O'Reilly for their Safari ebook library). Second, they may well be deductible expenses come tax time.
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Cluelessness abounds in today's publishing industry when it comes to e-book pricing. Some of the stuff is just ridiculous- last year I paid $65 or so for a print copy of 'Mac OSX Internals.' Big heavy book- wanted a copy I could read online. A month or so later, the company released a pdf copy. Was it free for me since I bought the book? No- they wanted $45 for the pdf (I called about this). So, I grabbed a pirated copy, which is within my rights, according to US laws.
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Whether it's within your rights under US laws is questionable. Expecting the publisher to give you a free copy of the electronic version because you bought the paper version in understandable, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any publisher to
do it.
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Talk all you want about morality and the poor publishing industry, but look at this market pragmatically- few people will buy overpriced e-books, even if the publishers whine about their costs.
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The question is what overpriced is. My basic point is that there isn't an all inclusive definition. The fact that a price is higher than
you wish to pay does not, ipso facto, make the book over priced for everone, and without knowing the production budget on the particular book, you have no way to tell whether the publisher
could price the book at a price you think is reasonable and stay in business.
Pragmatically, if I'm the buyer, I want the cheapest price. Pragmatically, If I'm the publisher, I need to make money to stay in business, and I won't charge a price where I'll lose money on the deal.
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Dennis