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Originally Posted by RedRoverJ
I do not know the financials involved but that does not work for me as a consumer. If $5 is not viable as an eBook price then the publishers need to rethink their strategy. Most consumers want cheaper eBooks.
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Most consumers want cheaper EVERYTHING, but the people who produce things can't set prices that result in losing money. I'd buy more cars if they cost $1000, but it's not realistic to expect that. Ditto for $5 books.
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People always ask about my eBook reader and assume that book prices are cheaper, for reasons that have been discussed many times. When I tell them that the books cost more than the paperback they get a confused look and often say something like "Oh, that's neat but I will wait until book prices change..." I don't see those changes coming from the publishing industry.
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If books cost more than the print version, that's a problem ... but the overwhelming majority of ebooks are cheaper than the paper version.
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Many authors are trying to go the independent route and can offer their books much cheaper when they cut out the publisher. This model is obviously in its infancy, and is not without its hurdles. The hardest part, it would seem, of going indie is that people see indie books as inferior. While some indie books are certainly not worth bunk, some other authors do have their books properly proofed and edited by professionals in the industry. People need to understand the indie does not mean amateur. The trick is separating the good indie authors from the fly-by-nighters who think they are authors. Although, you cannot argue that the big publishers have not released their own share of bunk over the years.
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The self-published route is simply not going to work. There are too many authors who write absolute crap, and will try to sell that crap as ebooks. The publisher is an effective filtering process for print books AND ebooks. The consumer can't be expected to filter through the garbage to get to "the good stuff."
If you want to read the sort of quality that you'll get from self-published ebooks, volunteer to work for a publisher -- they'll let you read those books for free. It's called the slush pile.
Authors who go the self-publishing route do so not because they want to "free themselves" of publishers (you'll find very few actual published authors who are switching to self-publishing). They're authors who have been rejected and think publishers don't "get" them.
The reality is that 99% of these authors simply don't write good material. I've seen their work for a couple of decades, and reject it. There aren't a lot of hidden gems out there, and what hidden gems there are are buried beneath horse manure.
So no, don't start thinking the "indie" author is going to be the future of ebooks. By and large, their material really is amateur at best, for the most part.