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Originally Posted by kirbinster
Most of the infrastructure already exists so the incremental cost is tiny.
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What infrastructure are you talking about? The editing, proofreading, advertising, etc? If the book has already been published in pbook, then the incremental cost is, as you state, tiny-but why should you pay just the incremental cost? The real issue is that *all* the infrastructure costs should be spread over *all* the distribution channels that benefit from that infrastructure.
If a publisher makes a practice, for example, of pricing the hardback issue high, to recover those infrastructure costs, and the ebook issue low, because the incremental costs are low, that publisher will find the hardback issue running at a loss that won't be made up by the ebook issue. Eventually, that publisher will go out of business.
(There's a way around that, of course. As has been mentioned by others, some publishers delay release of the ebook until sales of their hardbacks decline 'naturally'. I have no data on this, but I suspect these are the ones who price their ebooks closer to their paperbacks. Others, who bring out the ebook version at the same time as the hardback, also price them similarly because they share the same infrastructure costs.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirbinster
Further, there is another flaw with an ebook being closer to a movie rental than a hardcover book purchase. When you buy an ebook you for the most part cannot share it like you can with a real book - thus I look at it as closer to a rental than a purchse. I can't give it to my neighbor and then my son when done with it, with a few exceptions. Thus, I still think the price way too high.
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Agreed-but there's a significant difference in the period of the rental. And some sellers (both publishers & distributors) allow re-downloading a purchased book for a new device. No, you still can't loan it out, but now the rental period is indefinite. (Not infinite-the best policy that I know of will only keep them available, assuming no problems crop up like a company going out of business, for the life of the original purchaser. Technically it might be possible to will my entire account to somebody, who would then use my login, etc. but legally I'm not sure that would be allowed.)
So, the proper comparison might be 'buying' an ebook vs renting a movie for a period of at least several years. How much would the movie cost then?