Would you pay MORE for an ebook

[GeoffR]

I wouldn't normally want to pay more for an ebook than a new paper book, because most paper books are way overpriced in New Zealand, and if buying from Amazon the postage alone is usually a lot more than the price of the ebook.

But there are some exceptions: if I am buying direct from the author then I don't mind paying extra; and if I had an almost-complete series as ebooks then I could probably be persuaded to pay extra for the final ebooks.

(I have 11 of the 12 books in Gene Wolf's Solar cycle but am missing the 7th ebook. Come on Tor, just publish Lake of the Long Sun and I'll buy it even if it is the same price as the hardcover!)

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Barty

I just did.

I got a pbook from my library and after struggling with the hard to read font and having to handle a physical book for a day I bit the bullet and bought the kindle version for $9.99. Pretty stiff price for a backlist published in '92, but sometimes the heart wants what it wants. (I wonder how I managed to do much reading before e-readers.)

The consensus feeling on MR seems to be the zero margin cost of ebooks and their non transferability mean they should cost less than paper books, but for me ebooks are just better -- at least for narrative fiction (as opposed to, say, text books, technical manuals, references). I'm just happy the publishers are not able to price discriminate against people like me, due to above sentiment and, well, the fact that if they charge too much for ebooks it would just drive more people to piracy.

At this point, the pbooks lovers are essentially subsidizing the book industry for me, which is great :-)

Given that I have pbooks dating back to the 70's and that I've been replacing pbooks with ebooks as the backlist becomes available, I frequently pay more for an ebook than the original pbook. A number of my pbooks from the 70's cost less than a dollar new.

I don't know about consensus feeling. Certainly there is a group of posters who think that ebooks should be cheaper than pbooks. There is also a group of posters who seem to think that ebooks should be free or near free and anything else is stealing from the readers and another group that seems to think that ebooks should be priced at the same price as the current pbook price and finally a group that doesn't seem to care all that much what the price is. I'm sure there are others. Any appearance of consensus is probably more from one group being more vocal in the voicing their opinion than anything else.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Given that I have pbooks dating back to the 70's and that I've been replacing pbooks with ebooks as the backlist becomes available, I frequently pay more for an ebook than the original pbook. A number of my pbooks from the 70's cost less than a dollar new.

Many of the used books that I purchase from inexpensive sources (e.g. thrift stores) cost more than their original price. I wish that people would look at historic prices when they complain about the cost of books, rather than just complain about prices, since they outstrip inflation. With ebooks killing off the second hand market, the cost of books is even further out of reach.

I don't know about consensus feeling. Certainly there is a group of posters who think that ebooks should be cheaper than pbooks. There is also a group of posters who seem to think that ebooks should be free or near free and anything else is stealing from the readers and another group that seems to think that ebooks should be priced at the same price as the current pbook price and finally a group that doesn't seem to care all that much what the price is. I'm sure there are others. Any appearance of consensus is probably more from one group being more vocal in the voicing their opinion than anything else.

I think that corsage put it best with respect to cost when they said, "there are too many other books I'm interested in (...)." While a lot of books cost more these days, after accounting for inflation, many ebooks cost significantly less. Even though these are usually self-published books, some of them are from major publishers.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Given that I have pbooks dating back to the 70's and that I've been replacing pbooks with ebooks as the backlist becomes available, I frequently pay more for an ebook than the original pbook. A number of my pbooks from the 70's cost less than a dollar new.

You need to look at the historic value of money, though. $1 in 1970 had the same purchasing power as somewhere between $6 and $16 in today's money, depending what criteria you use to measure it ($6 if you purely consider inflation; $16 if you consider the increase in average incomes). See:

http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/

How many of your ebooks have you spent more than $16 on?

[Wearever]

That's a good point Harry. Also out of the e- books that are $9.99 in the series I'm collecting, the paperback versions cost more not less. On Amazon the the paperbacks are $13.00, the same price as the newest e-book that just came out this week.

[crossi]

No. Not even the same amount. I go through a lot of books, I have many books that I want to read and I often reread so I feel little pressure to buy some particular book RIGHT NOW at any price. I have plenty to keep me occupied while waiting for an ereaderIQ notification of a price drop. Often though, by the time I do get a notification I've sort of lost interest or I already have too many in my TBR pile. There have been a lot of books I might have bought immediately at what I consider a competitive price even with my existing TBRs, that once the price dropped I just filed the email and ended up not buying it because I wasn't much interested anymore. There is a downside for publishers in waiting so long to drop the price that the public has more or less forgotten about the book and moved on to others.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by crossi

There is a downside for publishers in waiting so long to drop the price that the public has more or less forgotten about the book and moved on to others.

I don't think there is a downside for them, actually. If there were enough "waiting for the price to drop" public to affect their bottom line, the prices would drop sooner. They simply ignore the bargain hunters, because they can. In the grand picture, there's just not that many I'm-looking-for-this-book-at-this-price buyers out there. The majority pays (whatever the price is when they're looking to buy) or borrows.

[crane3]

Like the OP, I did the same thing. The library book had very small fonts & used a light font as well (to save money by using less ink?). I judged that I would be OK with keeping the book & so bought the ebook.

An ebook copy at the library didn't exist & still don't exist so there is no way to borrow the ebook from the local library.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

In the grand picture, there's just not that many I'm-looking-for-this-book-at-this-price buyers out there. The majority pays (whatever the price is when they're looking to buy) or borrows.

I don't think that is true. Maybe for certain specific books that are must read autobuys like a new release from your favorite author. So you(a generic you not you specifically) buy that book by your favorite author, the next day you've finished it. Unless you have 365 very favorite authors and they each write a book a year eventually you are going to need to read books by your second, third or fourth tier authors or complete unknowns. There are so many of those there is no way you can read them all, and no way of knowing how much you will like them, wether they will be keepers or toss before finishers. Even favorite authors turn out duds. There are a lot of books that might sound sort of interesting but you don't really want them all that much. Those you might buy on the off chance that you might like it but certainly not pay the same as you would for your known favorites. Most books I buy fall in that catagory. I've about 400 books in my wish list that sounded interesting. Can't buy them all, don't have time to read them all, but might buy some of them anyway if the price is right.

So what are you going to do. You've finished what you were reading, you have 400 possibles on your wish list with no profound preferences between them, going to close your eyes and throw a dart to pick or sort by price and pick one of the 50 lowest priced?

[DiapDealer]

I'm not seeing how anything you said is relevant to my premise. The volume of material available for reading doesn't directly correlate to how much one is willing to pay. Besides, I wasn't talking about new-releases only. I was talking about ALL books. I still stand by my premise: most people don't track books until they until they reach their preferred price-range. Most people discover a book they want to read and then buy it or borrow it.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with sale-shopping for specific books. I'm just saying there's few enough doing it that publishers can safely ignore them.

[eschwartz]

crossi -- Keep in mind that the publisher has plenty of lower-tier books to earn money off of, as well as bestsellers -- so they can still afford to target the first-wave impulse-buyers. But the author might notice.

[crossi]

Oh sure. It seems reasonable that new releases are priced higher for those that just can't wait. Why not skim off the cream while the interest is high. There are always those products that people line up to buy. But interest wanes and even at first there is a finite supply of consumers willing to buy at premium prices. Once you've skimmed off the cream and sales start to drop as for every product (including books)happens eventually it is time to drop the price and catch the next tier of customers. Amazon is very good at knowing when it is time to drop prices to catch the most customers.

[Wearever]

I don't know if that many people buy a book the moment it comes out, at the highest price. Some will, for me I liked the sound of that particular book enough to want to read it when it first came out, and not wait. Most of the time I will wait till it goes a bit lower. I really don't like to buy a book at the highest price because I don't want publishers to think , oh we can set the price higher and still sell them. So I don't want to encourage that mindset. I think most people wait till it drops from the highest price offered. It may not drop much but still it's not the highest price. To me publisher pricing is a shell game, which one will they go for ?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Wearever

I don't know if that many people buy a book the moment it comes out, at the highest price. Some will, for me I liked the sound of that particular book enough to want to read it when it first came out, and not wait. Most of the time I will wait till it goes a bit lower. I really don't like to buy a book at the highest price because I don't want publishers to think , oh we can set the price higher and still sell them. So I don't want to encourage that mindset. I think most people wait till it drops from the highest price offered. It may not drop much but still it's not the highest price. To me publisher pricing is a shell game, which one will they go for ?

I buy a book the moment it comes out if I want to read it and know I will be able to read it right away.

It's not like books are expensive luxury items. Why should I wait months to potentially save just a couple of bucks? I will happily wait for sales and price drops on things like new tech, where savings can be significant, but not for a book.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's not like books are expensive luxury items. Why should I wait months to potentially save just a couple of bucks?

If I bought just one or two a month, I wouldn't worry either. But since I find I buy at least half a dozen every month, it starts to add up!

This year I've actually managed to be significantly under budget - only £117 spent so far, while my half-year budget is £150.