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Originally Posted by Derf
So here's a question... and I'm sure we can all speculate, but I do appreciate knowledgable answers.
A writer should be paid for their work. An editor should also be paid for their contribution. And the publisher also needs to make money. And the distributor wants a cut. And then the retailer needs to make a profit. And at the end of the day a paperback book might sell for say, $15.
Better yet, let me cherry pick an example. I just did a search on Amazon for "Dan Brown" and I found his 2014 book Inferno for $8.49 in paperback.
Now, an eBook, in my mind seems to cut out a lot of the middle-man costs for markup. You still need a writer with a good story, and an editor to whip a manuscript into shape. You may even still need some help with typesetting, layout, cover art, and what not. And of course there will still be advertising.
But no longer do you need a publisher who invests in paper, ink, glue, and machinery for printing and binding physical books. With a digital eBook you don't need a distributor, who has warehouses and trucks, the personnel with forklifts and shipping logistics to move the mass volumes of books. And you can also limit (in a large part) the cost to retailers, since they don't have the overhead to lease a building, cover insurance, pay employees to move inventory and checkout customers.
An eBook just needs a server to host it. Sure, there may be associated costs with hosting a server, or costs to license DRM encryption? But why is the cost of an eBook so high? In the case of the Dan Brown example above, the eBook on Amazon costs more than a physical paperback @ $9.99. Not to mention, you had to spend some amount of money on an eReader to read that book on it.
In my mind, an eBook does away with so many of the costs that drove the price of a book to where it sits. And when eBooks came along, everyone just wanted to keep the status quo and say 'well, it used to be about ten bucks to read a book, so lets keep it at ten bucks'. Even though so much of the process has changed.
I recall when I used to go to different computer software stores back in the 80's and 90's, even early 2000's, and to buy some piece of software was an investment. $30 for this program, $40 for that game. Then Apple came along with the iPhone in 2007 and said all these cool apps are going to be $0.99 or a $1.99. And even though there are apps that now cost $3, or $5, or $10, for the most part they are impulse buys.
eBooks, in my mind, should be like that. You spent $100 or whatever on some piece of hardware to read them. There's no physical copy, just ones and zeros that exist in the ether. Make the eBook version $2 or $3.
The music industry evolved too. You used to go into a record store and judiciously pick which new album you would spend your $17 on, now with Apple iTunes, or whatever you use, you can pick those few hits off an album for a buck a piece.
The same is true with movies. Buying a VHS or DVD or BD is more than buying the digital version in whatever content provider you use when you choose to buy the digital streaming version.
I guess I am just wondering why content consumption, for entertainment purposes, in a digital age, at least for for music, movies, and apps evolved to a cheap, impulse buy price range. But books, in the digital format, still command a premium price?
I guess this is partly a rant, but I'd love to hear what you think. I'm sure there is a lot of 'establishment' wanting to hold onto the power/money/system, and marketing probably accounts for a huge percentage of physical and digital content... but it works in other media types to be cheaper in digital.
Why didn't Amazon be like Apple and Google and provide a platform for writers to publish their ebooks for $1 and get $0.75 royalty on every sale? It just doesn't make sense to me.
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Good Question. Good Points.
When I was younger and my fingers were super supple, my hearing off the charts, I wanted to find a song. I went to the guitar shop, and other places and finally found a guy who knew the song by a Canadian guy, Neil Young (1993) and by the Band (1978), and later other groups.
HELPLESS
"Blue, blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes"
Why I wanted the song then, I don't remember. It seemed hard to get then.
Now it is easy with the computer, with Alexa, etc.
Now if I want Alexa to play say "16th Avenue", I say "Lacy J Dalton" "16th Avenue" and Alexa will play part of it without a subscription and ask me if I want to subscribe.
But I am tricky and if I say Alexa play the song with the words "cowboys, drunks, and Christians" Alexa will play all of 16th Avenue as many times as I want. Likewise my computer will play it off youtube without a problem.
You can't ask for a book like that, though you only want to read a book usually once so the owners, and sellers drive a much harder price for a book than they do a song.
Simply put they can charge most people more for a book.