[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Deneb

I get their way of thinking and your right in what you say. What I don't get is why they think they loose money on ebooks.

All I'm asking is to pay the price of a book minus all the cost that are not in the ebook. That mean everything untill they send the pdf to the printer. They still have the same author fee, the same editing fee, the same everything but we don't pay for a service (printing, shipping etc) that isn't there. It's not "cheap ebook" vs "expencive paperbook" it's letting people choose the format they want for the same thing.

Up to now, they have tried to convince us of "hidden fee in the making of ebooks that make them almost more expencive to make as a HC". That's what they have been trying, that's what I don't accept.

There's no decrease of value of a book in my mind just the need of a fair trade.

I agree with almost everything here, except possibly your math.

I think the appropriate price for an ebook is the cost of the currently available paper edition minus the costs the ebook does not incur that the paper version does and plus the costs the ebook does incur that the paper book does not.

I doubt very much that any of us know exactly what these costs are, but I am sure they are not zero. Nor are they likely to be identical for all books.

Part of the problem too, is that ebook sales are currently very low. This means that even though the overall costs for creating an ebook may be lower than for the paper edition, they take a much bigger chunk of a smaller projected sales volume so they may drive the cost up that way.

Lower total costs over a smaller sales volume may equal greater unit costs.

Another factor is that while publishers do pay for printing costs, they don't usually pay shipping costs, so why should they lower their prices to pass along someone else's savings to the end user? Shouldn't the person who benefits from the savings be the one to pass them along?