"If you can afford an ebook reader, you can afford ebook prices"

[jamesbeat]

I bought my reader because I emigrated and couldn't ship thousands of pounds of books with me. Now I have come to prefer the digital format over paper books, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to pay more for them or indeed that I can afford to.
Luckily, I tend to prefer golden age sci fi, so downloading a bestseller is not something that I do.
If I wanted bestsellers, I would resent the pricing strategies and attitude of the publishing industry and use that resentment to justify obtaining the books via bittorrent, like so many others do. I bet illegal downloads outstrip legal ones...

[dmaul1114]

It's not internet serious business.

It's just that the legal system will have to adept to deal with issues of theft in the digital age when many products are only available in digital versions.

Shoplifting and other types of traditional theft will no longer be possible when a movie, album or book is only availble as a digital download.

People keep wanting to threaten that resisting such stuff will lead to the end of intellectual property etc. That will never happen as then talented authors, movie directors, musicians etc. would quit putting out new products. Musicians will just say screw albums and make their money touring (where they already get most of their income), directors will go back to theater and plays/musicals that can only be seen in person. Authors have less options of course, but you'd probably see people make enough to retire and quit writing.

As lets face it, people are in it for the money. Now as in any era before or in the future anyone can create something and give it away for free. But not many do long term, as soon as they can sign a contract and get paid for their efforts they jump at it.

People want to get paid for their work and don't want people enjoying it for free--else they'd never sign a contract with a publisher, record label or movie studio and would just distribute their work freely locally or an any of the tons of free web hosting services, face book etc.

Laws will adapt, we'll figure out ways to protect peoples digital products and consumers will adapt as well over time. It will be a long and slow process, but by the time our lifetimes are over we'll have shifted to 100% digital content in many areas, have standard penalties most have excepted for distributing or obtaining digital content illegal, and life will go on.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

I don't think the prices justify piracy.

The appropriate response is to not buy the book, and write the publishers saying why you're not purchasing their product.

Something being priced to high doesn't justify stealing a copy. You wouldn't do it with a physical copy would you? Walk into borders and shoplift a book you want to read but feel it's too high? So why is it ok to steal the digital copy because the e-book is priced to high?

I'm always amazed how the move to digital content, and the ease of illegal obtaining digital content vs. physical products, seems to shift peoples moral judgments on right and wrong.

fortunately you are not the Jiminy Crickett of the interwebbs. as I said, I justified my reader with the knowledge of a price cap. and I had looked at some of the older books on Amazon that I new I would be interested in, and they were all well under the 9.99.

then we have the false delays in e-publishing which is a bunch of horseshit. I both bought and pirated Under The Dome because I refused to wait, and I am about to start on book 12 of The Wheel of Time as I'll be damned if I am going to wait for them to epublish a book a month of that series especially as I owned MANY copies of those books, wanted to read them again before reading #12, and now that I have an ereader I don't see the need to deal with a bulky book or be bonked in the head with it when I fall asleep.

it's time for the publishers to smell the new reality

[Bremen Cole]

The person who wrote such an article is an elitist idiot. So I guess if you can afford a car, you can afford to pay whatever price the oil companies/government wish to impose on you for a gallon of gas.....

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

It's not internet serious business.

It's just that the legal system will have to adept to deal with issues of theft in the digital age when many products are only available in digital versions.

They do. They're called computer misuse statutes, for when people hack into systems and delete things. They are a different class of offence to unauthorised copying.

Your "adept" isn't necessary.

People keep wanting to threaten that resisting such stuff will lead to the end of intellectual property etc. That will never happen

Oh yea? You *are* aware of how fast the PirateParties are growing, right? They have 2 MEP's already. And they don't care you what you think about it "never happening".

People want to get paid for their work and don't want people enjoying it for free

Yes, but there are realistic approaches involving not treating the customer as the enemy, and reaching the maximum viable market rather than trying to drain every drop out of an ever-shrinking number of people willing to be exploited.

Laws will adapt, we'll figure out ways to protect peoples digital products and consumers will adapt as well over time.

Read the Microsoft darknet paper. You can't realistically stop the darknet without crackdowns which make China's censorship seem like a mild breeze on a sunny day compared to a storm. If you are calling for that, and frankly you're calling for the end of IP because people will simply stop buying IP.

That attitude is part of the problem. Until you're willing to admit to that, you're simply feeding the moral panic which only serves the darknet community's membership numbers. I work in an IP dependent industry, and it's shocking how many people don't bother to read up on the basics, or to listen to what the other side is actually saying.

Things like ACTA which spring from your views are the sure way to alienate the entire public on the concept of IP, and I can't blame them in any way, shape or form: And it's going to splash over onto the sensible, crushing our profits as well.

(Not more, as big business will like to claim, and probably actually less, proportionally: but badly enough!)

[ficbot]

Most people probably have $50. It doesn't mean they want to spend it on an ice cream sundae. What a ridiculous argument.

[Iphinome]

Funny, I bought my kindle because i decided it would save me both money and space. How much do dead tree copies of public domain books coast in the US? $5 or $6 if you're lucky, maybe $10 or $12 if you're not? Checking my bookshelf the average price of my books that are in the public domain is $8, so 20 of them pays for the kindle 1 assuming i would have bought them. The ones on my bookshelf tell me I want my own copy of works in the public domain so it works out to me not willing to pay higher prices.

[jamesbeat]

The current publishing paradigm is dying and will soon become obsolete.
The publishers are trying to discourage people from buying ebooks over the paper version because they are tring to protect their business model, but they're only delaying the inevitable.
Government support and new laws won't prevent that from happening.

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by jamesbeat

The current publishing paradigm is dying and will soon become obsolete.
The publishers are trying to discourage people from buying ebooks over the paper version because they are tring to protect their business model, but they're only delaying the inevitable.
Government support and new laws won't prevent that from happening.

Where did you come from? Rare insight and wisdom and it's the first time I recall seeing you.... anyway you have hit upon the raw truth.... most here refuse to see it, and cling to tradition, but you are right...... karma coming your way, and a big

[Patricia]

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people can't actually afford a brand-new e-ink device but still read ebooks.
People use laptops, PDAs, and second-hand or refurbished reading devices; not to mention their phones.

[Bremen Cole]

Originally Posted by Patricia

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people can't actually afford a brand-new e-ink device but still read ebooks.
People use laptops, PDAs, and second-hand or refurbished reading devices; not to mention their phones.

Gotta go to sleep soon.... anyway... Patricia, you are so right. I read on PDA's and Pocket PC's for years.... (since 2000) as well as a computer monitor. As I said before the person that wrote the article is an elitist weeny.

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by Iphinome

Funny, I bought my kindle because i decided it would save me both money and space. How much do dead tree copies of public domain books coast in the US? $5 or $6 if you're lucky, maybe $10 or $12 if you're not? Checking my bookshelf the average price of my books that are in the public domain is $8, so 20 of them pays for the kindle 1 assuming i would have bought them. The ones on my bookshelf tell me I want my own copy of works in the public domain so it works out to me not willing to pay higher prices.

Or you could have read those public domain books on your pre-existing computer or phone or other device without additional expense.

Thinking of the device as something that "pays for itself" is flawed, and probably should be avoided.

[Crowl]

Within reason, the price of ebooks doesn't bother me as long as they seem fair, by that I mean that they should at least slightly undercut the price of the main paper edition that is available at the time whether thats the hardback on initial release or later on the paperback price.

All too often, especially with older books you see ebook versions priced higher than the paperback price, presumably because it is newly released as an ebook and the publishers mistakenly think that its price shouldn't be affected by the real price of its paper equivalent.

Take the hhgtg books on waterstones as an example the ebook prices are higher than the individual paperbacks and then to compound the idiocy this is a book that has been commonly available in omnibus editions for a decade for marginally more than the cost of one ebook.

The publishers need to realise that an ebook is not like some extra special director's cut edition of an existing work and as such their customers are aware enough of relative value that they are not going to pay like it is.

If they manage to find ways to truly present something that people found equivalent to such things then all credit to them, but ebooks of back catalogue works are just another reprint of a cheap paperback and should be priced that way even if somebody has to spend a little time scanning it in.

[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Or you could have read those public domain books on your pre-existing computer or phone or other device without additional expense.

Thinking of the device as something that "pays for itself" is flawed, and probably should be avoided.

Why would I want to read on a phone? My computer isn't set up for reading in bed or on a train on a bus in the rain in box with a fox here or there or anywhere that's not sitting at my desk. So if I were want to read Jane Austin or Mark Twain or Edgar Rice Burroughs somewhere other than at the desk my computer lives on I could buy a dead tree version, I could buy a kindle (which I did), I could buy a PDA since I don't own one at this time, I could use a netbook and drain the battery like hell, I could try reading on my ipod but I imagine that would suck as hard as a phone or pda.

The kindle worked out cheaper than dead tree versions and gave me the bonus of paying for a device which I in theory though amazon probably disagrees, own and not paying for public domain works which already belong to me as a member of the human race.

I'm not saying buying dead tree public domain stuff is wrong, someone printed them up and put them in stores so they could be read without resorting to an electronic device and if they make a buck good for them it isn't as if I couldn't do the same thing if I wanted to lay out the capital. I'm saying between the options that suited me the kindle was the cheaper.

Paying more upfront to pay less down the road is valid.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by Patricia

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of people can't actually afford a brand-new e-ink device but still read ebooks.
People use laptops, PDAs, and second-hand or refurbished reading devices; not to mention their phones.

And let's not forget those who bought (or were given) dedicated devices because of age and failing vision. Little did they know that this would make publishers feel entitled to a share of their possibly meager savings.