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I am angry with the price of eBooks at Sony Connect (and the industry in general).
For the person that thinks the overhead cost of delivering a .6 Meg ebook is equal that of the overhead cost of a 500 page paperback, I say BS.
First lets look at the biggest DMR content delivery service out there, iTunes. The average iTunes track is $0.99 and that is for a 6 Meg file yet, even the purchase of the "entire cd" gives the user a significant savings over even the best discount music store.
Based on the stock price of Apple alone, I doubt iTunes is losing money with ever sale of music from their iTunes store.
Now lets look at the cost of producing a paper book.
It is much more than just paying for paper, the paper has to be delivered by the ton.
1) The paper has to be cut to the appropriate size for each book (labor).
2) The book has to be printed and checked for quality (labor)
3) The book has to be bound and checked for quality (labor) and (material)
4) The book has to be shipped to distribution centers (labor) and (transportation)
5) The book has to be shipped to individual stores (labor) and (transportation)
6) The books that are not sold have to be purchased back and destroyed.
Removal of Step 6 alone should be enough to offer a significant discount to the readers of eBooks.
In addition since all books that make it to print are in a digital format creating an eBook out of any book on the shelf is as easy as SAVE AS (or more likely running a batch convert that I am sure Sony has developed).
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