Quote:
Originally Posted by kjk
I should have been more clear-I meant that a novel was less like one song and more like a collection of songs, and shouldn't be priced similarly to one song.
I actually don't necessarily think iTunes is necessarily a "fair model", but the OP used it as what he thought was a good example.
And sorry, but I'm not going along with the hypothetical one song = one novel, but if it works for your argument, go for it.
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In the UK, iTunes charge average £7.99 for an album (
Source)
What I am saying is that because distributing it in digital costs them far less, they should pass on the savings to the consumer. If eBooks become £5 for new releases and when the paperback comes out reduce the eBook price to £2.
The prices of eBook Readers have come down now as well. Waterstones sells one (which I got) for £130 and WHSmith sells a Sony one for £140. I think more people will start to buy eBook Readers.
They should jump ahead and start to offer eBooks at a better price before more people buy eBook Readers. This way there will be a place where they can buy eBooks easier and is not expensive.
They should not do what the RIAA did with Napster by closing it. When it closed Kazaa, BearShare, dozens of others opened up and it was too late. This is not 5+ years ago were everyone had 56kbit modems, everyone in the UK has 2mbit connection average, if they don't provide a cheap and easy way of buying eBooks people are just going to pirate them. BitTorrent has made it so easy for the average user to pirate anything that they will lose out in the end. Also back then there was none of these free upload sites like RapidShare, MegaUpload etc and now there is they've made it even worse, because they are so easy to use and they don't need extra program to download.
Sorry about the working with dollars. I was thinking in pounds and didn't convert it. This is why I wrote in pounds now.