Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

[din155]

Being a late entrant to e-book buying public, I am happy as long as it costs less than or same as its latest counter DTB version.

din

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

...The ebook-community group at Yahoo is, fwiw, very author/publisher-focused and anti-"piracy", which they seem to define as "more than one reader per purchase."...

For me personally this is the very root of the issue. "More than one reader per purchase"? Seriously? If they really do believe this then I have zero sympathy for the publisher or the author. Piracy should really be defined as copying data and reselling it for profit, or uploading it for millions to download. If you let your wife/son/daughter/mom/dad/brother/sister read a book that you just read then NO piracy took place, period. What you do with the file for personal use is simply beyond anyone to control if it stays inside your own home.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let me ask those people who think that eBooks are too expensive a question:

The standard price for a paperback book in the UK is £7.99 (about $12.30); that's what you'll pay in any physical bookshop.

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

Generally speaking, buy US paperbacks as they are $4+ cheaper? Only your lot thinks in pounds I believe.

So $7.99 - a 'reasonable price' is $6.00. It it was DRM free then the dead tree price is probably reasonable, too.

A friend used to have a rating system for potential partners. They start at 10/10. If they smoke, you take 5 off. That is sort of how I see ebooks. If they are DRM crippled they are only worth getting when they are on massive sale or free unless you really, really, really like them to start with. So if they cost more than $3-4, forget it, generally speaking.

Now we have the Hachette ripoff, so even the 'hot' ones like Alastair Reynolds that might be worth it at a not so good price and DRM crippled have had prices hiked 65% from $8.50ish to rather more than your English paperback example above. No one's worth that, for fiction. And Neal Asher at Macmillan for example will be 25% higher again for the standard range.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I'd say £5-6.00 sounds fair. Less than £5 sounds like a deal.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I'd say £5-6.00 sounds fair. Less than £5 sounds like a deal.

I agree. And, in fact, most of the time, a £7.99 paperback will have an eBook version which costs around £5 (£4.99 is a very common price point). I consider this to be very reasonable, personally.

[ChristopherTD]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I agree. And, in fact, most of the time, a £7.99 paperback will have an eBook version which costs around £5 (£4.99 is a very common price point). I consider this to be very reasonable, personally.

I concur. I am content to pay that much without too much fuss. The current SF Gateway sale by Gollancz has a lot of books at £2.99 which is even nicer. But as long as you are happy to wait out the artificial hard-cover pricing window, the UK ebook prices are not too horrible.

Though I do hope some sort of bundle appears for the 21 Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O'Brian that have just been released!

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by ChristopherTD

The current SF Gateway sale by Gollancz has a lot of books at £2.99 which is even nicer. But as long as you are happy to wait out the artificial hard-cover pricing window, the UK ebook prices are not too horrible.

Except in Australia - where they are - wait for it - about 167% of the price everywhere else.

When I asked why, in several different places the response was as usual. None.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

AND available to all regions, without any form of restriction.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sabredog

AND available to all regions, without any form of restriction.

The publisher generally has no say in that, so it's not really a consideration. If it's not available to you, then you can't buy it, so the price is irrelevant.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

Except in Australia - where they are - wait for it - about 167% of the price everywhere else.

When I asked why, in several different places the response was as usual. None.

It costs so much more to ship electrons across the ocean!

Originally Posted by HarryT

The publisher generally has no say in that, so it's not really a consideration. If it's not available to you, then you can't buy it, so the price is irrelevant.

The publisher is the one with the contract; they *do* have a say in where it's published. Often, they don't make the books available in all regions even when they *do* have the rights, because they're looking for a way to license those rights in other countries. So they're refusing to sell to book-readers, who've never been their direct customers, in the hopes of making business deals with other publishers. Or they've made a deal with a non-US publisher--who isn't bothering to sell ebooks.

It's also possible that Amazon doesn't allow individual settings on availability--or that some publishers have decided it's too much hassle to set each book's availability separately, and they just set them all to US only, or US-and-Canada only.

[Blue Tyson]

Unless you are HidingYourAss (or changing your address) etc.

An America Online thing I tried not so long ago gave you a USA IP address too, come to think of it.

But yeah, if not selling it to you, the only price you can pay in general is 0.00 and grab it elsewhere.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let me ask those people who think that eBooks are too expensive a question:

The standard price for a paperback book in the UK is £7.99 (about $12.30); that's what you'll pay in any physical bookshop.

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

90% of the complaints I have seen about eBook pricing in the past 3 months have made it clear that the problem occurs when the eBook costs either (a) more than $9 and/or (b) more than the latest paper version.

So, anecdotally, I would say that 90% of the posters here who think eBooks cost too much concur with this "reasonable" standard.

The other 10% have interesting things to say about backlist books, but that's a thornier issue.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It costs so much more to ship electrons across the ocean!

Yeah, it would be 0.00000267 cents more to ship it to Australia than New Zealand (where the sale is on), at least!

So aussies can decide whether to make a quick trip to the Auckland holiday house or the Leeds hotel if they want to buy one.

[jessicalynn]

Originally Posted by din155

Being a late entrant to e-book buying public, I am happy as long as it costs less than or same as its latest counter DTB version.

din

I agree, but I would replace "latest DTB version" with mass market paperback version (usually 7.99.)

When you spend 14.99 or whatever on a hardback book, it forever remains a hardback book, which is arguably of better quality than a mmp. However, when you pay 12.99-14.99 on a new release e-book, there's nothing extra special about it except you're getting to read it upon release. When the price drops later, the edition will still be exactly the same.

So I just wait til the price drops or get it from the library.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's also possible that Amazon doesn't allow individual settings on availability--or that some publishers have decided it's too much hassle to set each book's availability separately, and they just set them all to US only, or US-and-Canada only.

Not that hard to write a program to automate doing this. Just shows you that their technological competence isn't.