How many free or deeply discounted vs. $10 or higher ebooks have you bought?

[Tattncat]

Originally Posted by ApK

I've amassed so many free books on my Kindle, mostly thanks to the deals forum here, that it's a little embarrassing. Between that and the library, I'm certain I've only paid cash money for a small fraction of the stuff on my TBR list, and the majority of those were .99, and the rest were under $5. I can't recall ever spending $9.99 or over on an ebook, though I'd have to check my Amazon order history to say for sure.

Having access to so much stuff for so little money, I've discovered authors and genres that I never would given a shot at normal book prices. When these halcyon days are over, and I have to pay normal prices, I'll be comforted by the though of how much I'd saved.

Ditto.

[sdawson]

Almost all free or under $10 just one or 2 over that.

[Kevin2960]

All my eBooks are cheep or free, I don't mind paying £10 if I really want the book, but being honest ... I haven't found one I want that much YET!

Oh and yes the wife DOES call me Ebenezer ....

[Kevin2960]

And after a quick look through did Dickens EVER give Scrooge a first name ?

[Blue Tyson]

Ebenezer

[stonetools]

To the OP:
As you can see , most folks here buy mostly free or discount material and rarely pay over $10 for an ebook. You are atypical only because you buy a greater percentage of books at $10 or more than the average poster on this thread.
Dunno if it proves that most Nook owners usually buy only free or discount material, though. If true, then maybe BN investors are right to be freaking out, since they make their money mostly on book sales. .

[michelle2011]

I own aprox. 500 or so e-books. Most of them were either free or 3.99 or less. I've only bought 3 books that cost more than 9.99. And that was because I wanted to read them the day they were released.

I'm on a budget, so I get a vast majority of the books my family and I read.. both pback & ebook from the libraries ( physical & overdrive )

Between myself, my husband & my two kids, we would be broke if we bought all the books we read.

Now if ebook prices were capped at $5 I would be willing to buy alot more ebooks. I think last year I spent only about $45 to $50 dollars total on books, both pback & ebook.

If I had to guess at the number of books my family and I read last year, I would say that number would be somewhere around 200 to 250 books total.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by stonetools

To the OP:
As you can see , most folks here buy mostly free or discount material and rarely pay over $10 for an ebook. You are atypical only because you buy a greater percentage of books at $10 or more than the average poster on this thread.
Dunno if it proves that most Nook owners usually buy only free or discount material, though. If true, then maybe BN investors are right to be freaking out, since they make their money mostly on book sales. .

Grain of salt time: folks like us are hardly representative of the mainstream ebook reader customers, much less the subset that are drawn-in by the B&N brand and the ties to their stores. Most people buy ebook readers, especially the walled-garden Kindles and Nooks, to get access to their ebookstores. And they do use them to buy. Cheap or expensive, they buy. And Amazon, at least, makes *some* money on even the $0.99 cheapies.

That said, B&N has been way more aggressive in their "race-to-the-bottom" hardware pricing than Amazon. So if their ebook attach rate is lower than expected, or if they have been drawing a large fraction of their sales based on library support they could be in deeper trouble than "just" an excess of STRs clogging the system. (Bad in itself: 1 million extra STRs could eat their cashflow for a year.) It's too early to tell, though. And their problems aren't limited to Nook, anyway. Their store financials are a way bigger problem.

Anyway, there *are* price-insensitive ebook buyers out there; you just won't find many here.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Anyway, there *are* price-insensitive ebook buyers out there; you just won't find many here.

There are many of us here who think that current eBook pricing is entirely reasonable; the "everything should cost $1" brigade just like to try to pretend that we don't exist, and that they represent the "mainstream" view.

[GlenBarrington]

My limit seems to be the rough cost of a paperback book. Say, $7 - $11 US. If the book is in that price range, and I want to read it, I will buy it without hesitation. I mean, I would have bought it in paper in a bookstore for that it has that much value to me, I don't care what the expenses of the publisher are.

I WON'T pay hardcover price for ANY book. I mean ANY book. I've been wanting to read the most recent "Game of Thrones" book, but at $14 - $20 US, it just cost too much for a book in a series that might not actually be going anywhere in my eyes.

I can wait, just how stupid does the publisher think I am? (Don't answer, I know the publishers think we are all stupid)

[spindlegirl]

I certainly wouldn't say "a buck for every book", but I do think that $10 is kind of steep for an archived digital file of someone who died ten years ago, especially a DRM-sick one. Lower the backlist prices, take away the DRM so the book is mine for real, and I'd personally pay $4-7 dollars. (This is roughly what I pay when I am not reading free or library loans)

But the quality has to totally rock. There are some books I bought when I first got my Kobo (I now use at T1), of which I have also seen pirated copies. (No I do not approve of piracy) Guess which copy looks and presents better? I'd even pay $10 for a really trendy book - if I could, without question, take it as a given that the quality would be DRM-free and really amazing

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Grain of salt time: folks like us are hardly representative of the mainstream ebook reader customers, much less the subset that are drawn-in by the B&N brand and the ties to their stores. Most people buy ebook readers, especially the walled-garden Kindles and Nooks, to get access to their ebookstores. And they do use them to buy. Cheap or expensive, they buy. And Amazon, at least, makes *some* money on even the $0.99 cheapies.

That said, B&N has been way more aggressive in their "race-to-the-bottom" hardware pricing than Amazon. So if their ebook attach rate is lower than expected, or if they have been drawing a large fraction of their sales based on library support they could be in deeper trouble than "just" an excess of STRs clogging the system. (Bad in itself: 1 million extra STRs could eat their cashflow for a year.) It's too early to tell, though. And their problems aren't limited to Nook, anyway. Their store financials are a way bigger problem.

Anyway, there *are* price-insensitive ebook buyers out there; you just won't find many here.

I think Amazon has been the one leading the race to the bottom in hardware sales: remember , the $79 kindle 4 and the $199 kindle fire? They can do that because they make their money on sales of other stuff, I guess.

BN is trying hard to be competitive but its stuck in the same vise as the rest of the brick and mortar book sellers- the vise that squeezed the brick and mortar record stores into oblivion: it's just cheaper and more convenient to buy digital reproductions of content online.

[Namekuseijin]

In other words, you think the way to go is to save your money, let the authors die of starvation, lobby for shorter copyrights and finally read once his works enter the public domain?

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

I certainly wouldn't say "a buck for every book", but I do think that $10 is kind of steep for an archived digital file of someone who died ten years ago, especially a DRM-sick one. Lower the backlist prices, take away the DRM so the book is mine for real, and I'd personally pay $4-7 dollars. (This is roughly what I pay when I am not reading free or library loans)

But the quality has to totally rock. There are some books I bought when I first got my Kobo (I now use at T1), of which I have also seen pirated copies. (No I do not approve of piracy) Guess which copy looks and presents better? I'd even pay $10 for a really trendy book - if I could, without question, take it as a given that the quality would be DRM-free and really amazing

Good thing most mainstream buyers don't think like you , or the book industry would collapse.
You are new around these parts, SG, so you probably don't understand that the issues of ebook prices and DRM have been debated to death.
Suffice it say that as Scalzi put it, ebooks aren't special snowflakes. They don't make the the price of authorial talent go away, or of proof reading, or of editing, or every other cost of making a book, except printing and distribution- and that's not a huge percentage of the total cost. Its almost certainly less than 20 percent. It ain't 50 or 70 percent and even the most died in the wool ebook enthusiasts admit that.
To paraphrase a famous economist, it is not by the benevolence of the author, the editor, or the publisher that we get our evening's entertainment , but their regard to their self interest. You make it not worth their while to produce new books, and there will be no more new books-including no more new library books and no more new used books.
OK, strike that- there will be new ebooks, but they will be of the Smashwords type-typically, badly written, badly formatted, badly edited books put out by hopeful amateurs. Nothing wrong with that, but I and most traditional buyers aspire to and will pay for better than that .

[soulfuldog]

64% free
14% bought for under £5
13% library
8% borrowed from family
1% bought for under £10
0% bought for over £10

However, prior to getting a Kindle, the percentages would have been something like
70% library
25% borrowed from friends & family
5% bought for under £10 (most at £4-5)