Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisa
So with MacMillan and probably HarperCollins moving to the agency model and forcing a higher retail price, a lot of folks are saying they won't buy. I suppose people's choices may change if all the big publishers go this route, but as it stands today, what are your plans?
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I rarely am willing to pay more than $30 for a book. I have to really want the book to pay that much for it. However, I will usually spend $10 or less on the chance that I might like it. I suppose this works out to the proposition that I'm willing to spend $30 to get a good book to read, and I figure that if I have to spend all 30 on one book, I'd better be darn sure I'll read it. This calls for deliberation. OTOH, my experience is that I'm willing to spend that same 30 on three books, figuring that I'll like one of them for sure, and might not finish the other two. I am more likely to buy these books on impulse.
So my plans aren't changing, just my opportunities. If the publishers were to go to $30 ebooks, I'd buy fewer - mainly ones I'm confident I'd finish. If they went to $10 ebooks, I'd buy more - but I wouldn't necessarily finish them all.
I'm not entirely sure how I'll deal with $15 books. I won't exactly boycott them, but I think they fall on the deliberation side for me, rather than the impulse side. So for the time being, I'm pretty sure to buy fewer books at what seems to be the emerging price structure.
But I remember some things. I remember when paperback books crossed the $3 barrier, and then the $5 barrier, and how I felt like I'd stop buying them at those prices. But eventually, I didn't.
With the emergence of the iPad, I suspect that I'll be paying more attention to the opportunity to share books with my family. I'll be more likely to buy at $15 if I know that someone else in my family would be interested in reading the book.
This is because there are six of us, and at least three of us will have Pads, five of us have iPhones, and all six of us have Macs. Plus one has a Kindle. eBook sharing will drive the effective prices down, for us, which is why sharing will become more important in my calculations.