Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Alright, let me ask this. For a book that normally retails at $16, what would you say is a fair price for the ebook version? Is $9.99 about standard across the board? Or can you justify charging the full $16 for the ebook? Or will ebooks always be about 2/3rds the price of their print cousins?
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About 35% of the hardcover price, or about $5.60 based on $16 list price (I'm assuming retail price = list price in your question). If your $16 represents the discounted price, not the list price, then my answer would be 35% of list price of the hardcover. When the paperback version appears at a list price of $9.99, I would increase the percentage to 45% or $4.50.
The real issues for me are these:
- fiction is read-once-then-throw-away as an ebook because of the DRM restrictions
- fiction ebooks tend to be poor cousins quality-wise to the pbook version
- nonfiction (at least of the type I read) has greater future value to me and thus if the ebook is well-formatted and properly edited I might think about paying a bit more than the 35%
but
- I am unwilling to pay more than $6 for any ebook as long as there is no universal DRM scheme.
The biggest hangup to "fair" ebook pricing is the DRM babel. I cannot justify paying more than the $6 for a book that I might not be able to read next week when I buy a new device. Publishers need to create and enforce a universal DRM scheme so that like a DVD movie, I can buy the ebook and read it on any device of my choosing today or tomorrow.