Ebook prices drive me insane

[Barcey]

Still my ironic favorite.

Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash Of the Record Industry in the Digital Age

I can buy the paper book for CDN$16.34 but the ebook prices are CDN$24.25 to $28.52
http://www.ebookprice.info/book/100219.html

[anurag]

Originally Posted by ascherjim

One REALLY needs to shop around, at least for a U.S. purchaser. A new title I was searching for yesterday (name irrelevant) was over $30 at the Sony bookstore (the same price as the hardcover), a little over $19 in Kindle -- and a little over $5 (Yes, $5!) at one of my other usual ebook sellers (from which I promptly purchased it). And this price disparity (and cheapness) is not consistent among my sources. Go figure.

Can you reveal the name of the store selling the book for less?

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

If two different channels have different costs, and the end price is adjusted based on those costs, then the profit stays the same. It shouldn't matter to the company if they sell via the expensive channel or the cheap channel if the amount of profit they make from the sale remains the same.

Right now what they're doing is charging the same price (or more) for the cheap channel as the expensive channel. That means their profits are a lot higher. That's great for the company, but the consumer is getting ripped off.

No, the point is to keep the price the same regardless of the channel-that way the cheaper channel is not cannibalizing sales from the more expensive channel. (Assuming total sales are inflexible then the manufacturer would prefer to sell everything via the cheaper channel as that generates more profit. But total sales aren't inflexible. Not all channels reach the entire market-so the manufacturer generally doesn't want to lose one of their major sales channels, which they will do if the distributor of that channel feels that the manufacturer is undercutting them thru a different channel.)

So profit actually rises as costs fall. So rational publishers should prefer to sell volumes as eBooks, but since the eBook market is much smaller than the hard-copy market, they don't want to do so at the cost of losing their hard-copy market. And the way they ensure they keep their hard-copy market is to keep the prices the same in both markets.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

True, but you still have to sell at a price that consumers are willing to pay. I don't think the market (demand) for eBooks is really going to grow while Publishers are charging the same (or often more) compared to the paper book.

I tend to agree except I'd say that it won't 'take off'. I think it will grow, but slowly. And it might not grow at all if they keep up the DRM BS.

BTW, despite the fact that I understand why they charge the same for eBooks as hard-copy I still dislike it. Like the bookseller, I'm looking out for what I think is best for me. But I do look at the large picture.

Yes, I think that helping the eBook market grow is good for me. But I need to place a value on that so I can compare it to how much it costs me. (The cost is, essentially, the cost of buying hard-copy books vs. buying eBooks. And cost includes both storage & replacement costs. I rarely have a hard-copy book become unreadable because the bookseller went out of business or changed formats. But I've also never gotten rid of an eBook that I might want to re-read some year due to a lack of storage space.)

[ascherjim]

Originally Posted by anurag

Can you reveal the name of the store selling the book for less?

I don't think this would help you much as this particular source (one of the top five) is not consistently the cheapest. That's why I suggested the need to really shop around, consulting as many sources as you can find. It's amazing to me how prices can vary among them all. Good luck.

[anurag]

That's all right - I'm building an ebook search engine (and including MobileRead ebooks!) so I was curious. If it's in the top 5 I probably have it in my index already :-)

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Wetdogeared

A quick search using ebookprice.info returned this.

I'm new to all this, and don't really understand all this formats business. So here's my question.

Wetdogeared, that looks like a great site! Thanks!

I plan to read Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World. The site says that the book costs $18.65 from Amazon UK, but only $1.99 in the pdf/ADE format from Powell's Books.

But I can download it for free from Project Guttenberg. So what is it about the pdf/ADE format that I would want to give even $1.99 to Powell's Books for?

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

I don't think the market (demand) for eBooks is really going to grow while Publishers are charging the same (or often more) compared to the paper book.

I agree, but I don't think the issue is the profit margin. I think that the public does not consider a download to be as valuable as a tangible object, whether it's a book or a record album.

In fact, I think that the public hold downloads in low esteem. I predict that if the publishers keep the price of eBooks high, we will see pirating just like we have seen for music.

[FlorenceArt]

I agree that a download is worth less than a physical book. A download is worthless unless I have a device that can read it (and works - my Cybook stopped working in the middle of my holidays, that kind of got me thinking, lol), and power to feed that device. Of course it has other advantages but it is less reliable and durable, even without the limitations of DRM. With DRM of course, the value goes down even more since the chance that I can still read it a few years from now are even slimmer.

A book may be cumbersome and less practical in some ways, but at least I can count on it at any time. With reasonable care it will still be readable 10, 30 or even 100 years from now. I can lend it, give it away or even sell it if I want to.

And of course let's not forget that a download costs significantly less to produce: no paper, no plant, no inventory, no physical distribution. Funny how increases in production costs always find their way to the end user. Decreases, somehow, seem to get lost on their way to the consumer

[BearMountainBooks]

What are the top five sites for ebooks? I'm kind of new at this game and have been browsing Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but selection varies, prices vary and so on. I'd like to know what you knowledgeable types look through!!

thanks
Maria

[FlorenceArt]

I've been using fictionwise.com and booksonboard.com. Fictionwise has a much better interface but booksonboard has always had the lowest price every time I've taken the time to compare. Their interface is a pain though. Both sites seem to offer the same books.

[susan_cassidy]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

What are the top five sites for ebooks? I'm kind of new at this game and have been browsing Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but selection varies, prices vary and so on. I'd like to know what you knowledgeable types look through!!

thanks
Maria

If you like science fiction and/or fantasy, Baen Books: www.webscription.net. Great prices, no DRM, several formats.

[astra]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

If you like science fiction and/or fantasy, Baen Books: www.webscription.net. Great prices, no DRM, several formats.

Although not mainstream sci-fi/fantasy.

[DawnFalcon]

They offer a fair amount of mainstream material as well as mil scifi these days.

And honestly, at this point it's best to talk about Webscriptions, because E-Reads and Night Shade Books have thrown in wholeheartedly, it's really not just Baen anymore. (Tor's near-miss thanks to corporate paranoia is noteable as well)

[Elfwreck]

Fun with ebook prices!

Captains Courageous is a public domain book by Rudyard Kipling. It was recommended to me recently, so I went looking for a copy. We don't seem to have it here at Mobileread (and I'm not asking anyone to fix that, although of course I think all of Kipling's PD works should be here), so I went to Fictionwise:

Here's the Fictionwise edition; Multiformat (so no DRM, several formats), for free. (Interestingly, its copyright info says it's copyrighted, but doesn't give a year or person/company name. I've sent them an email to ask about that; I don't really expect an answer.)

This one's by EBooksLib, secure eReader, for $1.99.

And here's Random House's edition, secure Ereader/Mobi/Lit, for $3.95.

The Fictionwise edition uses the same description text as the Random House edition; the EBooksLib version uses the first sentence as the "description."

BooksOnBoard has 3 ebook versions, ranging from $1.49 to $4.99, and two audiobooks, $13.95 and $24.95. (And some enhanced version for ESL students with foreign language thesari included.)

ebookprice.info doesn't have any of the Fictionwise versions, and has 11 different listings for the book. I understand that some publishers list it as "Captains Courageous," one as "Captain Courageous," and some as "Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling," and "Captains Courageous - A Story of the Grand Banks" and so on. But whatever the reasons, I've found ebookprice.info to be useless for finding the books I want to read, which aren't generally current bestsellers. (Also, I can't search there for "1984;" it doesn't have enough characters.)