Transatlantic E-book Economics

[carandol]

It's occurred to me that the high cost of ebook readers is partially offset in the UK by the high cost of books. A paperback bought from a UK publisher is usually about double the cost of the same book from an American publisher. They're usually around £7.99 in the shops, whereas a US edition would probably be $7.99. I've got just over 50 books on my iLiad, a few of them bought, many of them from here, or Feedbooks, or the Baen Free Library, etc. I did a quick estimate of what that pile of books would have cost me from somewhere like Waterstones (assuming they were all available in paper versions, which many of them aren't, of course) and it came to more or less what I paid for the iLiad. So when I've read the books currently on my reader, it will have paid for itself. If I lived in the US it would take me twice as long to get my money back.

[montsnmags]

Originally Posted by carandol

It's occurred to me that the high cost of ebook readers is partially offset in the UK by the high cost of books...

Along almost the same lines, I bought Proust's six-volume "In Search of Lost Time" (Modern Library - thanks, Patricia!) for about AUS$32. If I bought them at Borders each book would have cost about the same AUS$32. I'd add that up and tell you how much I saved, but it's 9.30pm and I'm sitting warm and stupid in a beery haze. Add the public domain "Classic" ebooks in that I've downloaded, versus their bought new price (frequently more than a "regular" paperback), and this Iliad's saving me a bomb.

Or, at least, that's what I'm telling myself...though I bought four "dead-tree" books on the weekend, because it's the first time in months that I've visited a real, city-store, bookshop - Borders - and, oh my, the pleasure of book-browsing in a store bigger than my bedroom (unlike the bookstores in this neck of the woods). I was totally getting off on the smell of compressed cellulose.

Cheers,
Marc