Why are ebooks so expensive?

[stonetools]

Looks like small and medium sized publishers, along with Amazon, are trying an experiment with sale pricing on backlist books.

Are publishers taking the plunge into experimenting with e-book pricing? Today Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) quietly launched Kindle Sunshine Deals, a two-week promotion pricing about 650 Kindle books “from numerous bestselling and award-winning authors” at $0.99, $1.99, and $2.99. While individual authors have seen success putting their e-books on sale, this promotion is unique because of its scale and because it is being run by Amazon and appears to be in collaboration with book publishers.

As far as we can tell, no e-books published by the “big six” U.S. publishers (which use the agency model, setting their own prices for e-books on Amazon and paying Amazon a commission) are included in the sale. The books included in Sunshine Deals are all from small- to mid-sized publishers like Candlewick, Bloomsbury, Sourcebooks, and Tyndale House. Also included is Open Road Integrated Media’s edition of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice. Chelsea Handler’s My Horizontal Life, published by Bloomsbury in 2008, is currently the bestselling Sunshine title.

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If you want to actually influence the publishers into offering backlist books at low prices, help yourselves to some deals. $$$ speak to publishers a lot louder than screeds on Internet forums .

[caffeinenights]

All of our titles are available from Amazon at $2.99 or £2.08. There are many publishers out there who are just plainly setting their prices wrong or trying to see what the market can bear. This is still relatively new territory for many but that is not an excuse. Many people also avoid $0.99 cent books because they think the price reflects the quality of writing. As a pricing model $0.99 is unsustainable unless you are shifting big numbers. The main challenge publishers’ face (speaking personally) is hoping that consumers adapt to paying for digital content in a world where a few clicks of the mouse can lead you to download illegal content freely.

[VAharleygirl]

Originally Posted by Bev M

For me, the frustration isn't the absolute cost of the books. It's the price fixing that I find objectionable. I get emails almost daily with discounts and coupons and other incentives for printed books. I used to get those same sorts of deals for ebooks. Now the sellers aren't allowed to discount ebooks, but the publishers still apparently have no problem with all sorts of discounts for paper. I truly don't understand why the difference! Had the publishers done something "half way" like not allowing NYT bestsellers to sell for less than $XXX, or not allowing discounts for XX amount of time after an ebook was published, I'd have been OK with that. I've never been one who "had to" have the latest book in any format. But to simply disallow the same sorts of discounts or frequent buyer rewards that are allowed for paper just makes no sense to me.

Indeed.

I just purchased a NookColor to take with me on vacation. In addition to mis-understanding that I couldn't directly d/l non-Nook books via WiFi, I came upon the rude pricing model.

As someone w/ a annual reading habit well over $1k (if I bought every library book & kept every book that was "meh"), I buy a good chunk of PBs via coupons. Why I can save 10-60% on a Paperback book, but 0% on an eBook, I don't understand. I get 1-3 weekly coupons from one Bookstore, 1-2 a week from another; yet I can't sign up - OUR PAY - for membership to a discount club/newletter for eBooks of "current" books nor older SF books I'd love to have in my collection but don't have room on the paper-bookshelf for.

I haven't decided if I'm keeping the NookColor, due to the pricing structure for eBooks I can get from B&N, plus the hassle of d/l books to it from the ePublishers I can download to my tiny iPhone for immediate reading. I'm OK w/ no 3G, WiFi only - but let me d/l from other sites as well.

[ton4o]

Some of them are very expensive but it depends how big is it. If it is a relatively short story less than 50000 words it is a shame to price it more than 3-4 dollars. The last book i read was nearly 140000 and i bought it for 9.99 which i think is fair enough.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ton4o

Some of them are very expensive but it depends how big is it. If it is a relatively short story less than 50000 words it is a shame to price it more than 3-4 dollars. The last book i read was nearly 140000 and i bought it for 9.99 which i think is fair enough.

I will pay more for a good book that is short than a mediocre book that is long. It is also easier to write a good long book than a shorter one. So if you want to pay for the authors work choosing a short book to pay more for is probably the right strategy.