Prisoner of Birth

[FligMupple]

I've been waiting for this book to be available on Sony's EBookstore store... and now it is!

But... the price is $18.45 (a "34% savings" off the hardcover edition)

The Kindle edition is the usual $9.99.

I wish Sony's prices were more in line with Amazon's. I basically don't want to get it at $18.45. Isn't that a bit too much? I bought many new hardcovers at $12.99 so far, but I think Birth has crossed an imaginary price line.

[HarryT]

The eBook price will come down when the paperback is released. eBooks are generally rather expensive as long as only the hardback book is available.

[monkeywrench]

Many people have been successful in the past with emailing Sony support and making them aware of the difference in price. I usually include the price for the Kindle version, as well as the hard cover version from a couple of different sources such as Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc.

They will send you a form letter reply saying something about how the publisher sets the price, etc. Wait a couple of days/weeks and you may see the price drop.

I have done this on 3 or 4 occasions and have seen the price drop in about a weeks time each time I tried it.

Hope this helps!

[charlieperry]

It's a pity that they're charging so much. I'd buy a lot more books if they were more reasonably priced.

[ChrisW]

Originally Posted by charlieperry

It's a pity that they're charging so much. I'd buy a lot more books if they were more reasonably priced.

I happened to search for this book today and found it as a "special offer eBook launch price" on Waterstone's UK site at £15.19. You can buy the paperback on Amazon UK for £3.49 (new release this month). This sort of disparity is never going to help the eBook market to develop. Someone, somewhere is being very greedy.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by ChrisW

I happened to search for this book today and found it as a "special offer eBook launch price" on Waterstone's UK site at £15.19. You can buy the paperback on Amazon UK for £3.49 (new release this month). This sort of disparity is never going to help the eBook market to develop. Someone, somewhere is being very greedy.

More like being stupid in many case, or unaware if you are feeling charitable.

In many cases eBooks area a small and underfunded part of a larger organisation, and as such, often get ignored or overlooked.

In others, the Publishers are afraid that eBooks are going to cut into their Paper Sales and as such, keep the price up.

In either case they lose a sale, as I'm not going to be ripped off, and often will not purchase the cheaper Paper version as I get pissed off with the publisher.

[dhbailey]

I think that BBusyBookworms is right that the ebook division of many publishers is so small as to be totally overlooked in the larger marketing decisions which include pricing issues. And I would be willing to bet that the person assigned to run whatever ebook division many publishers have is sent there as a punishment rather than as a promotion, and has no real incentive to bully their division into the formidable corporate player it could (and should!) be.

When people do decide NOT to buy a book because of price for the ebook version, please be sure to notify the publisher of that decision and how their reluctance to provide the essentially expense-less ebook version at a reasonable price is costing them additional sales, and encourage them to look more closely at the finances of the ebook marketplace and the huge potential for profit (it's practically ALL profit after the initial fairly easy and cheap transformation from the print-books' electronic files to ebook format).

Amazon can charge so much less because they simply say to publishers "We sell a kagilliion of your print books, and we would like to charge only $x.xx for the ebook version. If we can't we simply won't sell your print books." THAT sort of persuasion, having the world's largest bookseller potentially refuse to sell any of your books, works well.

Sony, on the other hand, is more like a weak young child in an orphanage walking up timidly to the fearful and cruel headmaster and saying "please, sir, may I have some more?" when they negotiate with a publisher.

Perhaps they'll take a page from their CD division and their DVD division and simply buy a few publishers so they can control the content and the pricing!

[thfc2008]

Originally Posted by ChrisW

I happened to search for this book today and found it as a "special offer eBook launch price" on Waterstone's UK site at £15.19. You can buy the paperback on Amazon UK for £3.49 (new release this month). This sort of disparity is never going to help the eBook market to develop. Someone, somewhere is being very greedy.

Quite agree. The UK prices of some ebooks is nothing short of astonishing.

Its a bit like apple opening their iTunes store for the first time and charging 4x the price of a CD, i.e. £28.

I probably wouldn't have bought this paperback book - just because its not a priority read for me and my bookshelf is already full to busting with books I haven't yet read. But if this ebook had been priced at £1.99 (still a huge mark up based on incremental cost involved) then I would have gone for it.

These Sony Readers would be flying off the shelves if the prices were even remotely comparable.