Sticker Shock for E-Book Readers

[treadlightly]

I've never seen an e-book priced higher than an *available* (new, nonused) paper book on Amazon in the US. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it happened rarely.

Do you mean hardcover only?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

News about the price-fixing 6 and collusion with Apple is now hitting mainstream media...

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_new...-on-the-wallet

It's kind of funny that this article, dated yesterday, presents this as something new. And as usual, a huge number of the commenters on that article completely missed the point or totally got it backwards.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by treadlightly

In the Canadian amazon.com store, the Cussler ebook is $18.04. We get dinged with the border crossing byte tax.

You can hardly blame the publishes for that.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by musicman2523

I think they're still way too high. They have no printing costs. ebooks should max out at 4.99 in my opinion. I just won't buy them when I can get free books from unknown authors that are really good.............not all of them but a lot of them. I'm a big sci-fi fan and i've found several that should be made into movies or series............they really are that good.

Given that the cost of ink and paper is about 10% of the cover price, you're voting for lower quality books - less editing, no proofreading at all, amateurish layout, obscure marketing at best. Given that all these quality control points have declined in recent decades anyway, it seems sad to try to coerce publishers in to making them even worse.

[taustin]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

As a consumer, do I care?

If you're looking for someone to blame, you certainly should. Blaming the publishers for something that is actually done by your government is, well, counterproductive, and pretty much guarantees that the situation will continue.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by taustin

Given that the cost of ink and paper is about 10% of the cover price

Firstly, who said that was a given?
Besides that, now add in cost of warehousing and distribution.
Now increase the cost-per-unit to take account of returns. (You pay to print all the copies, not just the ones you sell)
I don't think the figure is 10%.

[Roger Parkinson]

Originally Posted by musicman2523

I think they're still way too high. They have no printing costs. ebooks should max out at 4.99 in my opinion. I just won't buy them when I can get free books from unknown authors that are really good.............not all of them but a lot of them. I'm a big sci-fi fan and i've found several that should be made into movies or series............they really are that good.

Several others have pointed out other costs like editing and marketing, and I agree with them. But there is IMHO another huge difference with eBooks compared to paper. Warehousing. By that I mean you have to have ration space for all those copies of paper books to exist somewhere and that is always a finite space. You have to have print runs and you have to decide how big they will be and if you go over you've got to offload those copies somehow to make room for the next (hopefully more successful book), if you go under you have to get another print run (and make another guess). I would so hate to be doing that job. But this is why most paper books have quite a short shelf life.

eBooks take up no real space at all. You can have one copy on your server and sell it over and over, forever. No print runs, no warehousing, no planning. That has got to make a difference to the price (or it should).

[treadlightly]

Originally Posted by taustin

You can hardly blame the publishes for that.

I was joking. Sometimes the Cdn ebook price is higher than the US price, sometimes it isn't. Seems pretty random to me. And for amazon, it is always in US$, so it isn't a currency issue.

[Namekuseijin]

Once publishers and their press machines and their physical distribution networks are not needed anymore, then we'll see substantial price drops. It'll come down basically to the author and a virtual store.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Roger Parkinson

there is IMHO another huge difference with eBooks compared to paper. Warehousing.

That is a cost, but a small one.

All of the costs related to paper -- printing, shipping, inventory and returns -- amount to around 15% of the total cost of a book. They've pushed those costs down significantly over the past ~10 years.

They'll get even lower in the future with on-demand printing.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Firstly, who said that was a given?
Besides that, now add in cost of warehousing and distribution.
Now increase the cost-per-unit to take account of returns. (You pay to print all the copies, not just the ones you sell)
I don't think the figure is 10%.

All of the available figures put the number between 10-20%. Because of the scope, mass production, warehousing, and even delivery are *cheap*.

Amazon has it's own warehousing and distribution expenses, but it can competitively ship books to 5,000 individual addresses in a city using UPS. It is much, much cheaper for a publisher to deliver 5,000 books to *one* address in a city than for a company to deliver the items individually to 5,000 separate addresses.

But I always find these "cost" arguments kind of curious anyway. The cost difference between manufacturing a hardback and a paperback is something like $2, but people never argued that the publishers had some sort of moral obligation to sell the hardback for only $2 more.

But for some reason, as soon as the topic turns to e-book, the conversation is "OMG, those greedy publishers are *keeping* the extra dollar they saved by making an e-book. They have a moral obligation to pass that dollar on to the customers! Otherwise, it's just a rip off!! Blah blah, etc."

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The cost difference between manufacturing a hardback and a paperback is something like $2, but people never argued that the publishers had some sort of moral obligation to sell the hardback for only $2 more.

But for some reason, as soon as the topic turns to e-book, the conversation is "OMG, those greedy publishers are *keeping* the extra dollar they saved by making an e-book.

There are at least two big differences between the hardcover/softcover debate and ebooks. One is that the consumer has the choice between an expensive hardcover and cheaper softcover, while obtaining what is usually the same produce (just different quality paper and binding). People who envision a world in which we only have ebooks without having pbooks also envision a world in which that choice is non-existent. So publishers are forcing everyone into a higher price bracket.

The second big difference is discounting. When there is a surplus of pbooks in the market, publishers feel compelled to discount (often deeply) the price of books so that they are not using up valuable retail space or less valuable warehouse space. That motivation doesn't exist in the pbook market, so publishers can keep the price of ebooks artificially inflated for years or decades. Will it stay that way in the long run? I doubt it will if consumers are willing to push back.

Of course there are other issues too. Many people see ebooks as value diminished products because they are losing a lot of their rights. Simply put, DRM ensure that consumers will not be able to maintain their purchases in perpetuity. At a minimum, they are at the publisher's whim when they need to replace their ereader. My experience with electronic devices suggests that batteries are rarely usable beyond 3 years. Paying $20 for a book that will die with your ereader is pure nonsense. Another issue is resale, which, of course, you don't have the right to. So if you view ebooks as throwaway items and pbooks as something that can be kept or resold, is it any wonder why people are only willing to pay a tiny fraction of the price for ebooks?

[rdfry]

The issue I see is that the price of all books is getting to be too high.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Call me a cynical old git, but I think a lot of the decision makers in publishers are coming close to retirement so they won't want any major shift in business model in case it affects their pension.

Well, I'm not one to miss an opportunity like that. Mr ploppy is a cynical old git.

[david_e]

Originally Posted by Namekuseijin

Once publishers and their press machines and their physical distribution networks are not needed anymore, then we'll see substantial price drops. It'll come down basically to the author and a virtual store.

Why would you assume this?

If there is no paper version of my product and, if I have no fear of piracy, and I control where you can purchase it, I'm going to price it as high as the market allows.