Will the Amazon Kindle cost US$50? - Page 12

gingercat · 09-10-2007, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

I think Nightwing means the price of e-books -- they're generally priced near or higher than p-book prices, when the cost of creation and delivery has to be at least somewhat lower.

No way - as I said b4 ebooks are generally at least half the price of pbooks (that's why I'm so keen to use ebooks). I think some of you must have access to some very cheap pbook prices.

NatCh · 09-10-2007, 07:53 PM

Um. Where are you buying your e-books, gingercat? I think I'd like to have a look at that store.

rlauzon · 09-10-2007, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gingercat

No way - as I said b4 ebooks are generally at least half the price of pbooks (that's why I'm so keen to use ebooks). I think some of you must have access to some very cheap pbook prices.

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
$6.99 Fictionwise (DRM eBook)
$6.99 eReader.com (DRM eBook)
$6.99 Amazon.com (paperback)

Actually, these prices are pretty good. Normally, we see things like:
Spook Country by William Gibson
Amazon.com $16 (Hardcover)
Fictionwise $26 (DRMed eBook)

Now, if you compare popular pBooks with "no-name" author eBooks, then you get the half price differential at these places. So the price will vary widely.

gingercat · 09-10-2007, 08:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

Um. Where are you buying your e-books, gingercat? I think I'd like to have a look at that store.

prices from mobipocket and sony connect are way cheaper than I can buy pbooks here (NZ) in any book shop down town.

Remember if I buy a book from Amazon it will probably cost me about $US10-20 in postage. My iliad cost $US51 just for postage

Maybe our pbook prioces here are just a rip-off. I don't know

Aberage pbook price here is $20 - $40. $6.99 with no postage cost looks like a bargain to me.

nekokami · 09-10-2007, 08:15 PM

Are those paperback or hardcover prices? For fiction or non-fiction? If you're paying US$20 for mass market paperback fiction, you have my deepest sympathies. New books in this format are usually about US$7.99 here in the States.

NatCh · 09-10-2007, 08:15 PM

Okay, I see your point, but it doesn't really apply here in the U.S. where the paperbacks are $6.99 and the e-books are ~$8.

JSWolf · 09-12-2007, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlauzon

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
$6.99 Fictionwise (DRM eBook)
$6.99 eReader.com (DRM eBook)
$6.99 Amazon.com (paperback)

Actually, these prices are pretty good. Normally, we see things like:
Spook Country by William Gibson
Amazon.com $16 (Hardcover)
Fictionwise $26 (DRMed eBook)

Now, if you compare popular pBooks with "no-name" author eBooks, then you get the half price differential at these places. So the price will vary widely.

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
$5.59 at BooksOnBoard (DRM eBook)

And you forgot one important issue. If you were to purchase the book at Amazon.com and spend less then $25, you would also have to include the cost of shipping/handling.

rlauzon · 09-12-2007, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
$5.59 at BooksOnBoard (DRM eBook)

And you forgot one important issue. If you were to purchase the book at Amazon.com and spend less then $25, you would also have to include the cost of shipping/handling.

I would also have something that's readable next year, and something that I can pass on to someone else.

You also forget that the cost to create that eBook is less than 1/4 of what it cost to produce that pBook.

JSWolf · 09-12-2007, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlauzon

I would also have something that's readable next year, and something that I can pass on to someone else.

You also forget that the cost to create that eBook is less than 1/4 of what it cost to produce that pBook.

Explain to us how the cost of an ebook is less then 1/4th the cost of a paper book?

ebook and paper books share exactly the same cost up to the point of formatting it for the various mediums. A paper book does have the cost of the paper and the ink and the cost of shipping to the stores. But the ebooks have the cost of formatting them in the various formats. So how when the costs split from the paper and ebook does that make it less then 1/4th the cost?

rlauzon · 09-12-2007, 12:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Explain to us how the cost of an ebook is less then 1/4th the cost of a paper book?

ebook and paper books share exactly the same cost up to the point of formatting it for the various mediums. A paper book does have the cost of the paper and the ink and the cost of shipping to the stores. But the ebooks have the cost of formatting them in the various formats. So how when the costs split from the paper and ebook does that make it less then 1/4th the cost?

We've been through this time and time again. Do I need to go over it yet again?

The vast majority of the cost of a pBook is the physical-ness of the pBook: paper, ink, printing press, distribution, warehousing, shelf space, etc. None of those costs exist for an eBook.

The people from the publishing industry have told us that out of the $20 you pay for a hardcover, the author gets about $1.

So, saying that the costs of an eBook is 1/4 that of a pBook is a pretty good estimate.

Alisa · 09-12-2007, 01:17 PM

I'm not sure about the retail book industry but in most retail you're looking at 50% of the price being the markup from the store itself. Maintaining retail outlets is expensive. Then you have to deal with overages and unsold copies. Plus I don't see how the cost of formatting is much additional. After all I'm sure these text are already in an electronic format for the editing and the printing. I think 1/4 sounds like a generous estimate to me.

silvania · 09-14-2007, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rlauzon

We've been through this time and time again. Do I need to go over it yet again?

The vast majority of the cost of a pBook is the physical-ness of the pBook: paper, ink, printing press, distribution, warehousing, shelf space, etc. None of those costs exist for an eBook.

[SNIP]

So, saying that the costs of an eBook is 1/4 that of a pBook is a pretty good estimate.

You may be going over this "again", but you''re just plain incorrect. You're ignoring costs that ebooks have that pbooks do not, and you're vastly overestimating the physical costs of pbooks. DRM fees consume 10 to 15% on an ebook. That's comparable to the printing costs of a pbook. A mass market paperback, that may list for $5 to $7, costs about 50 cents to print. The same ebook will cost about 50 to 75 cents to DRM. I realize the customers don't want DRM, and by the way neither do the retailers, but the publishers require it, and they require the retailers to eat the entire cost.

Authors generally get a higher percentage of ebook sales than they do pbook sales. That eats up whatever savings there are on warehousing and transportation. ebooks are a much lower volume business right now than pbooks (by a factor of about 100). Thus they do not enjoy all kinds of economies of scale that pbooks have and overhead becomes a much larger, not smaller, percentage of the business.

And customer support is much, much higher for ebooks than pbooks. Nobody buys a print book and then sends in a trouble ticket asking how to open the book. But that happens commonly with ebooks where there is software to install, file transfers that must take place, interactions with firewalls, new software releases that contain bugs, etc.

Some of these factors will improve with increased volume and technological shake-out. But right now, there is little or no "cost" advantage for ebooks, that's just an urban legend. The advantage might amount to perhaps $1 on a $7 mass market book, at most.

mogui · 09-14-2007, 08:42 AM

Thanks for your clarification, but . . .

I do not understand why applying DRM to an ebook would cost anything. The book must be formatted into the desired file format anyway. Isn't DRM just a convert-time option? I could understand it if the DRMed ebook is individualized to the customer's device, but is that any more than additional automation at the time of sale? Is there a royalty to pay to the company that wrote the software?

yvanleterrible · 09-14-2007, 08:54 AM

DRM is provided by specialized companies who offer it as a service.

nekokami · 09-14-2007, 09:03 AM

I think the point about tech support is particularly significant, and easy to forget. That does add appreciably to cost. While Amazon and other online retailers do need to maintain customer service staff to track orders gone awry, etc., they don't have to help people actually use the books.

On the other hand, without DRM, the support costs would likely go down significantly. So that's another way in which DRM is making ebooks more expensive.

If authors are really getting a higher cut on ebooks than pbooks, though, that's a good reason to buy them. How does it compare to what they get from a hardcover, I wonder?

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09-10-2007, 07:53 PM	#167
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	Um. Where are you buying your e-books, gingercat? I think I'd like to have a look at that store.

09-10-2007, 08:15 PM	#170
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	Are those paperback or hardcover prices? For fiction or non-fiction? If you're paying US$20 for mass market paperback fiction, you have my deepest sympathies. New books in this format are usually about US$7.99 here in the States.

09-10-2007, 08:15 PM	#171
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	Okay, I see your point, but it doesn't really apply here in the U.S. where the paperbacks are $6.99 and the e-books are ~$8.

09-12-2007, 01:17 PM	#176
Alisa Gadget Geek Posts: 2,324 Karma: 22221 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: Paperwhite, Kindle 3 (retired), Skindle 1.2 (retired)	I'm not sure about the retail book industry but in most retail you're looking at 50% of the price being the markup from the store itself. Maintaining retail outlets is expensive. Then you have to deal with overages and unsold copies. Plus I don't see how the cost of formatting is much additional. After all I'm sure these text are already in an electronic format for the editing and the printing. I think 1/4 sounds like a generous estimate to me.

09-14-2007, 08:42 AM	#178
mogui eNigma Posts: 503 Karma: 1335 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: The Philippines Device: HTC G1 Android FBReader	Thanks for your clarification, but . . . I do not understand why applying DRM to an ebook would cost anything. The book must be formatted into the desired file format anyway. Isn't DRM just a convert-time option? I could understand it if the DRMed ebook is individualized to the customer's device, but is that any more than additional automation at the time of sale? Is there a royalty to pay to the company that wrote the software?

09-14-2007, 08:54 AM	#179
yvanleterrible Reborn Paper User Posts: 8,616 Karma: 15446734 Join Date: May 2006 Location: Que Nada Device: iPhone8, iPad Air	DRM is provided by specialized companies who offer it as a service.

09-14-2007, 09:03 AM	#180
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	I think the point about tech support is particularly significant, and easy to forget. That does add appreciably to cost. While Amazon and other online retailers do need to maintain customer service staff to track orders gone awry, etc., they don't have to help people actually use the books. On the other hand, without DRM, the support costs would likely go down significantly. So that's another way in which DRM is making ebooks more expensive. If authors are really getting a higher cut on ebooks than pbooks, though, that's a good reason to buy them. How does it compare to what they get from a hardcover, I wonder?