Future Ebook Price Point

[Rob Lister]

It occurs to me that amazon and bn could get a good rough idea of the number of sales they're losing to their biggest competitor, piratebay. when an ip address searches for an ebook, particularly an older book, and that search doesn't generate a sale, that's an almost sure sale lost.

some % of those are getting them elsewhere and since they're the same price everywhere, that somewhere is piratebay.

[speakingtohe]

When libraries catch up with demand again I think ebook prices will go down. Not maybe to 0.99 but 1.99 or 2.99

As analogies go I percieve them midway between music and tablet apps.

You can listen to a song or play an easy game in a few minutes, and it takes several hours to read an ebook. But often people are listening to the same song or playing the same game for weeks/years after. For most the ebook will be read only once.

Helen

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

You know, that's actually not a a bad idea. Perhaps these scanning services could add an option to acquire books in your name so there'd be no double shipping. It's still PDF, I understand, and not epub, but I still think that could help with the extortionist prices for backlist ebooks.

There is a thread here in this section about a company doing scanning. They now will accept shipments directly from Amazon.

[acellis]

I, for one, have decided all ebooks I release in the future (I have a new one coming out before Christmas) will be priced at $0.99. And I will always have a few free ones out there to help promote the others.

Sure, there will always be piracy, but it's a cost of doing business. What should we do, stop publishing? I think not.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

There is a thread here in this section about a company doing scanning. They now will accept shipments directly from Amazon.

So I've seen. Unfortunately this option is available for Platinum membership only, read 100 (!) bucks a month. There's generally a lot of nickel and diming with their new pricing scheme, too:

Basic charge for 100 pages, 1$. Want OCR? Add 1$. Like a meaningful file name? Another dollar.

Oh, and turnaround time for the non-platinums has just worsened to 2-3 months (!)

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

The analogy applies to the availability of the products. The real issue here is the price point for individual morality, or the perception thereof.

How much am I [and all others] willing to pay to keep my virtue and NOT download a torrent of some ebook? Call it John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. I can get it legit from B&N $12.99 or I can get it free from a dozen torrents. Same book, minor typos notwithstanding.

At one end of the bell curve, that price point is a million bucks; some would never stoop that low. At the other end, it's 'not one red cent'; some never pay for anything.

The most money is made at the peak of the curve. For music, it's a buck.

Sorry, I wasn't completely reading into the original post that this was about piracy. Sure there's an optimal point, but I don't believe we've hit it. Right now copyright is sorting itself out and how it deals with the new technologies. There will always be copying. There has always been copying. People photocopying entire textbooks for courses, people copying music tapes for friends, people burning DVDs for others.

For the Grapes of Wrath, I'd do what I'm doing for a lot of books these days and that's using the good old paper library. $18 for Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises isn't going to happen for me. So I'll borrow the paper book at the library. Nobody reads the classics anyway so it's almost always available. Besides, my Kindle isn't going to like going in and out of the cold and show this winter anyway. -30C outside to +20C inside. Add in some condensation problems. Forget it. The e-reader isn't going on my bus rides this winter.

I still don't agree with the music analogy though. For some it might work, but for me, single tracks aren't the way I listen to music. I like albums, I like the flow between songs, and I like understanding more about an artist than the one the teasers on the air play.

[NickyWithNook]

Yeah, I think a book is more parallel to an album than just a song, as far as value goes. Maybe somewhere between the two, but closer to an album IMO.

[speakingtohe]

Yeah, I think a book is more parallel to an album than just a song, as far as value goes. Maybe somewhere between the two, but closer to an album IMO.

How many times would you listen to an album as opposed to how many times you would read an ebook.

Some people listen to an album 100's of times and even play it for others.

Still you are right if you only listen to an album once or twice or read an ebook many times over.

Helen

[HansTWN]

You can discuss the perceived value all day long -- what does it matter if nobody wants to sell it at your price? They just can't make it work. Even at a price of $ 0.99 they won't sell 10 times as many copies as they do at $9.99.

And if you are willing to go to the darknet, then any price will be too high and authors/publishers don't consider you to be a prospective customer.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Even at a price of $ 0.99 they won't sell 10 times as many copies as they do at $9.99.

So the sweet spot, as it were, must be somewhere inbetween. Perhaps they'd sell twice as much at 5.99? Three times as much at 4.99? Not our job to figure it out, though.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

No, the 99c (or whatever it is) song didn't stop piracy, but ease of piracy greatly helped set that price point.

An interesting theory. Did car theft prompt motor manufacturers to reduce the price of cars, or to make them harder to steal?

[rogue_librarian]

The fallacy, as always, is to compare tangible and intangible goods, of course.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

So the sweet spot, as it were, must be somewhere inbetween. Perhaps they'd sell twice as much at 5.99? Three times as much at 4.99? Not our job to figure it out, though.

Obviously publishers have made their projections and believe they make the most money at the current high price level. I am no industry insider and can't argue with them.

My guess is that for a popular author people will buy plenty at a high price and after a few months they can get the bargain hunters at a reduced price (30% or so) as they do with pbooks. Books of unknown authors will sell better at low prices, though if a publisher believes in a book a better strategy may be to heavily promote the book and keep the price relatively high.

If you sell too cheaply you reduce perceived value and many people will stay away.

[NickyWithNook]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

How many times would you listen to an album as opposed to how many times you would read an ebook.

Some people listen to an album 100's of times and even play it for others.

Still you are right if you only listen to an album once or twice or read an ebook many times over.

Helen

A song lasts 3.5 minutes on average, and it takes how long to read a book? Maybe 10 hours? That's like 170 times listening to a song.

[TFeldt]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

You can discuss the perceived value all day long -- what does it matter if nobody wants to sell it at your price? They just can't make it work. Even at a price of $ 0.99 they won't sell 10 times as many copies as they do at $9.99.

Are you certain of that? Any studies to back that statement up? I'm honestly not trying to argue with you about it, just interested in the facts since I don't have any particular insight into the publishing industry's finances, beyond the fact that they seem to be hurting because of their current approach.

I can give you an equivalent though. The cost of video games has continually risen as the production values increased. We're reaching all time high price points (above $60 per game), yet people are becoming millionaires from $0.99 games. Yes, I'm quite aware that the video game industry's target audience dwarves the book industry's audience by a substantial margin, but there's also more games being made than books. Massive amounts more games. Supply and demand should equalize the comparison nicely.

The way I see it is that video game developers, and not just indies but full blown studios as well, have embraced the concept of slimming down their operating expenses. The same is true for musical artists. Book publishers seem entirely unwilling to do the same, thus their overhead remains the same and they pretty much have to charge the same price.

A book these days can be created with three basic elements. The author, the editor and the distribution channel (be it kindle or whatever else). Those are the required elements. On top of that you might want to add an artist for the cover and a marketing campaign, but going back to the $0.99 game scenario you can be entirely certain that 90% of the games released have little to no marketing done in advance. Yet they do just fine. I'm not sure what the publishers actually bring to the table anymore that justifies raising the price that much.

PS: That last sentence wasn't meant as a flame, I genuinely just don't know what they offer that could be so valuable. Anyone care to enlighten me with some concrete examples?