Quote:
Originally Posted by SerialAeon
Hey y'all (southern salutation ;-))
As everybody here I think, I've been very interested by one of the promise of the electronic version of books, i.e. their (supposedly) low price. After all, a great part of a book's price is the cost of the advertisement made and the conception / printing / transport / managment of the unsold copies (maybe an edition professional there could precise this).
In eBooks we're left with advertisement and conception. Why, then, the observed prices are barely inferior to 30% of the price of the physical copy on most of the website I've been in ? I'd expect something like 20% OF the price of the physical copy. So far I've been very disappointed by the prices policy I observed. Any comment, or something I'm not aware of that could explain these high prices ?
Aurelien
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I remember when Windows, other operating systems, and software came with thick printed manuals.
Now these manuals are included on the installation disks. Wow! Microsoft doesn't have the expense of millions of printed pages. So Microsoft, and the software industry, has passed on the savings to us. I mean, we're only talking about the cost of a DVD disk.
Hey, tell that to Microsoft and the others.
The response would be that the product is priced according to its value, not its manufacturing cost.
What is being left out of the ebook price discussion is the author. Traditional hardback publishers pay an author 10 to 15 % of the cover price. Ebooks have become a different game, largely because of the distributor (Amazon, et al). Authors are looking at a & of the SELLING price (not cover price). Bottom line is that authors, who create the work you want, make less than the distributor. Despite the fact that the distributor no longer has storage expense.
I have heard that the readers of ebooks are threatening to boycott certain writers whose ebooks cost too much (say, more than 2 cups of Starbucks coffee).
What if the authors boycotted ebooks?