Sticker Shock for E-Book Readers

[luqmaninbmore]

In other words, rent seeking behavior.

[thomasn75]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Ebooks are required to pay VAT (20% iirc); paper books are not.

Unless that law gets changed, in the UK it isn't really a fair comparison.

I contacted my mp to ask him to look into this anomaly. His reply was in essence that the uk government could not change this(even if they wanted to) as they are not allowed to as vat restrictions are part of the eu treaty. It would require eu approval. I don't know what to think of this. I just seems ridiculous that we are paying vat on a format that apart from other benefits is very environmentally friendly.

Originally Posted by thomasn75

I contacted my mp to ask him to look into this anomaly. His reply was in essence that the uk government could not change this(even if they wanted to) as they are not allowed to as vat restrictions are part of the eu treaty. It would require eu approval. I don't know what to think of this. I just seems ridiculous that we are paying vat on a format that apart from other benefits is very environmentally friendly.

That reminded me of the time that I had to pay an environmental levy on an old fashioned analogue clock that didn't even come with batteries. It made positively no sense to me since that clock will last for years and contained few toxic materials while disposable electronics (like these portable music players) that are throw away items with much more hazardous materials in them aren't levied. At least not visibly. Taxes rarely seem to make sense even when their purpose is clear.

Yet, on the whole, I agree with that EU treaty bit. Provided that the VAT is consistent across the EU. After all, it helps to avoid the situation where consumers buy from jurisdictions with lower or no VAT simply because there is a lower or not VAT. Buying from those jurisdictions creates at least two problems. The first is that it pillages from government resources in your own jurisdiction because you aren't contributing to the funding of those programs. The second is that it provides other jurisdictions with a competitive advantage that reduces the opportunities for employment in your own jurisdiction because those other regions (likely) have lower employment standards and standards of living.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by taustin

If you're looking for someone to blame ...

Blame? Nah, I'm simply justifying (and to some degree, explaining) my non-buying decision. Trust me, consumers don't care about stuff like that when voting with their wallets.

Blaming the publishers for something that is actually done by your government is ...

Sorry, what? The whole price-fixing scheme is, perhaps unusually, not the government's fault for once.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Blame? Nah, I'm simply justifying (and to some degree, explaining) my non-buying decision. Trust me, consumers don't care about stuff like that when voting with their wallets.

For me, the reason I don't buy e-books anymore is largely (and almost entirely) because of the DRM. I probably would even not mind the price of e-books so much if, after a purchase, I could feel like the book is really mine! On Smashwords, MobileRead, Project Gutenberg, I can download a book directly on to my NON-Windows computer and do whatever I want with it, and keep it forever, change the cover at my whim, keep a copy on my computer and on my e-reader, in short, unlimited personal use, until I die, during which time my husband or children can keep it themselves. (Like a dtb).

But over $10 for what is essentially a "rental"? (And is often sub-par in formatting and quality) I can "rent" books from the library (both e and paperback) for free! So I reserve e-books from the library.

[TechnoCat]

The MSRP of a book, including ebook, is clearly not related to production cost but rather to what the market will bear. Costs will rise to meet the incoming revenue, because that's what costs do, with the help of boondoggles, tours, marketing campaigns, unions, etc. Some do, some don't apply to books, but that's how it works. EBooks are still trying to find their resting point.

There's a chain department store out here, Fred Meyer, that often has at release the newest blockbuster movie on DVD for $9.99 - $11.99. This is typically nearly two hours plus another hour of "extras", the extras being the only bit you don't get for incremental-cost free from your Dish-PVR, HBO or NetFlix streaming. The soundtrack for that movie, which has less material (the same music and none of the action/video/etc), running at typically 50 minutes, so about 1/4 the total DVD length, is priced at $17.99. So you pay nearly double for a lot less material... but part of it is because the availability is artificially less than for the movie - HBO isn't streaming the album specifically.

Is anyone here going to argue that the CD soundtrack really has higher costs, of any sort, than the movie DVD featuring the same tracks and more?

The music market is changing though. For example, the Adele album "21" would almost certainly have been $15.99 on CD if released three years ago. Amazon has the CD for $9.99, but the digital album costs a dollar more despite obviously having lower manufacture costs, and the a la carte tracks would add up to about $15. And publishers are reducing the prices of older albums by "remastering" them into $8 CDs.

Magazines point out the fallacy of book prices too. Magazines also require editing and production, on a tighter timeline and with a far shorter payback timeframe, but cost less.

The publishers are trying to find the pain point where the trade offs between the formats, the ease of pirating books (including ebooks, but also in someone doing a scan/OCR/publish) and prestige (the initial hard cover will probably always be an "event") and the loss of sales to lower-priced competition (do I really care about this $12 ebook when I can buy four other ebooks that look entertaining for the same amount) equalize. But it won't have anything to do with production cost.

<This long message had essentially zero production cost. )

[HansTWN]

Yes, there doesn't have to be relationship between production costs and selling price. The problem for ebooks is that it is so obvious to the consumer that ebooks have lower production costs and that in many cases they are being priced higher than the pbooks. You also always see the prices for the PB, HC, and the ebook at the same time when you are buying an ebook. Which means that Ebook buyers feel they are being taken for a ride. It is a very bad public relations strategy.

AND the fact that 5 big publishers got together and started raising prices on the very same day stinks to high heavens.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by TechnoCat

Magazines point out the fallacy of book prices too. Magazines also require editing and production, on a tighter timeline and with a far shorter payback timeframe, but cost less.

Magazines are supported by advertising, completely unlike books. The comparison is flawed.

[JanG]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Magazines are supported by advertising, completely unlike books. The comparison is flawed.

Hmm... I wonder if we would be willing to accept advertising in our ebooks if it meant considerably lower prices.

[Phogg]

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%.

And nobody else who has ever worked in distribution thinks so either.

[Gotadimple]

Originally Posted by JanG

Hmm... I wonder if we would be willing to accept advertising in our ebooks if it meant considerably lower prices.

If you own the $79 Kindle, you already get advertising. Did you notice any difference in ebook prices on Amazon for those readers when downloading? Unless the seller can recognize each iteration of hardware it doesn't seem plausible that they could distinguish between reading hardware and adjust the price accordingly.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

If the high prices are hurting ebook sales, how come Amazon's ebook sales keep going up and up, and have now surpassed print book sales?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_864387.html

I can't read the article, so I don't know if they address that or not.

eP

Because of people like me who won't buy a pbook except as a last resort.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by Gotadimple

If you own the $79 Kindle, you already get advertising. Did you notice any difference in ebook prices on Amazon for those readers when downloading? Unless the seller can recognize each iteration of hardware it doesn't seem plausible that they could distinguish between reading hardware and adjust the price accordingly.

I don't see the connection. The $30 price break for the Kindle with the ads is for the hardware, not for the ebooks.

If publishers were to add advertisements to ebooks, they would be embedded in the books themselves. The hardware would be irrelevant.

[Ntsimp]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

The $30 price break for the Kindle with the ads is for the hardware, not for the ebooks.

Yes, but the advertising revenue makes up for the price break early in the life of the device, and is pure profit thereafter, regardless of any ebooks purchased. There's no reason getting an ad-supported Kindle couldn't give you a discount on ebooks.

[david_e]

Originally Posted by JanG

Hmm... I wonder if we would be willing to accept advertising in our ebooks if it meant considerably lower prices.

As long as I have the option to purchase what I want without advertising, sure, why not.

I still don't think these price drops everyone wants are ever going to come. The millions upon millions of devices that are being sold are going into the hands of everyday consumers, people who are used to paying retail prices for the few books they read a week / month. They are going to buy what they want, regardless of price.

The shift from demanding, discernible, super-consumer to your average, everyday consumer is just going to lock those prices in, simply because of the sheer volume of them versus not-them.

No one is going to stop reading because of this, it just means some people may buy fewer books. The publishers / authors / retailers or whoever it may be still gets the money.