Hi Rabbie,
Welcome to mobileread!
Ebook pricing policies are currently in a state of flux. The big publishers are trying things out to see what they can get away with. And yes, this includes doing crazy things like trying to charge more for the ebook than for the cheapest paper edition.
There are at least a couple of threads on ebook pricing. Here's a recent one:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57227
Some publisher do know how to price ebooks. The classic example if Baen, where the individual books are $6, and bundles of a month's releases are $15. But they only do SF/Fantasy. Romance publishers mostly understand ebooks too.
But from most publishers at the moment, the most you can hope for is that the price isn't actually
more than the paperback.
I expect that this will change over the next five years or so, as ebooks become more mainstream.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rabbie
I am considering buying an ebook reader but was shocked by the price difference between ebooks and printed. As an example in Waterstones online Ian Banks book Transition was £14.00 for ebook, £13.00 for Hardback and £9.09 for paperback. How can they justify this? They have no printing,distribution or postage costs and in my view the prices should be the other way round.
I would be good to hear some other views. Hope I have put this in the right place
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