Price as Criterion for Book Selection?

[Sydney's Mom]

I absolutely will NOT buy a book because of price, but not the reverse. If I feel the ebook is priced too high I either check it out from the library's digital collection, or if it is really old (I am revisiting an author I loved as a teen), I will go online and order it from the library. I picked up 6 books on Saturday. This is how I got some bestsellers when the publishers were windowing.

If popular ebooks were $9.99, I probably wouldn't think twice. But now, my TBR list is 2300 books - I think I have enough to last me during my old age, even if I am eating cat food. So there aren't many of my current taste I don't have - but if I start to like gory suspense books again, I will restrict looking at 6.99 and under.

[Hellmark]

Price is my final factor to consider. How interested in a book determines how much I am willing to spend. If I am really wanting a book, I'll even suspend my normal max price per book. I do try to cap the price of books I buy, but mostly for budget reasons. I mean, so many of us are trying to read 100 books this year, and if I am spending $10 or more a book, I can easily blow through $1000 on books. Given that this year I'm expected to have $13,000 in take home pay, that is a little more than I can afford.

[Tome Keeper]

Price is an important factor for me, especially as I'm on a low income, and I flat out refuse to pay for an e-book version that is more expensive than the paperback. I often go to Amazon via reviews and then if the book is under £3-4 I will give it a shot, I'm willing to pay up to £10 for more established authors or those I have read before.

This has meant, on occasion, that I have not brought a book from one of my favourite authors because of the price and instead borrow it from the library once it's available.

[stickybuns]

Now that I think about it, there was a very short time (like a minute or two) that I was picking books based on price. As in, "Oh, my gosh! FREE??? For reals?! I gotta get in on that action!!"

After downloading half-a-dozen books in quick succession, it suddenly dawned on me that I had no desire whatsoever to read Amish romance novels. (Seriously, what's with all the Amish romance novels? Are the Pennsylvania Dutch really a major target audience for ebooks?)

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

You'd skip a book that you really want to read, only because of its DRM status? I loathe DRM as well (karma to you for your loathing ), but I think I'm too much of a junkie to not read it anyway (as a library copy, as a DTB, or I'd strip the DRM and accept the consequences for my civil disobedience.)

I would buy it used in paper, chop the binding and run it through a scanner to read as image-only PDF before I'd deal with DRM.

I have done this.

If a used/destructible copy weren't available, I'd cope with finding paper & reading that. (But "chop and scan" is ahead of "read pbook" in my preferences.) There is no book I need to read so much that it's worth putting up with DRM.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I would buy it used in paper, chop the binding and run it through a scanner to read as image-only PDF before I'd deal with DRM.

I have done this.

If a used/destructible copy weren't available, I'd cope with finding paper & reading that. (But "chop and scan" is ahead of "read pbook" in my preferences.) There is no book I need to read so much that it's worth putting up with DRM.

Ditto (sort of). Buying DRM'd content is supporting DRM with my dollars - my vote. No way.

I might put up with DRM for $1 or free on an ebook (not that I have...almost all of mine have been free); about $5-$6 on an Xbox live arcade game or PC game. I'll tolerate Steam DRM on PC for under $10.

That's it. Even a $1 DRM'd ebook is annoying because I'm going to have to spend 20 minutes or so stripping the DRM...and I haven't even re-installed all of the tools I need to break it since I replaced my laptop HDD with an SSD - more annoyance.

I won't chop and scan. I instead buy a paperback or hardcover version and download the ebook from what mobileread seems to call "the darknet" (boogety boo!).

If I know I like the books (the case for Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of the Ages series...after I read book one in paperback)...I buy the hardcovers. Even a first edition hardcover is frequently cheaper shipped than a full MSRP ebook from one of the agencies.

I ended up paying $12 a pop for a few of Haydon's 1st edition hardcovers at a used bookstore. I wasn't paying $8 for DRM'd ebooks instead.



My biggest dilemma is paperbacks. Stuff that I want to read but not enough to buy a hardcover. I vastly prefer ebooks to paperbacks (paperbacks are annoying to read on a flat surface while eating, cooking in the kitchen, etc). I generally just end up buying neither...


EDIT:
I did buy a couple of ebooks for history classes and strip the DRM. In that case it was a matter of either being far cheaper than the paperback and having no resale value, or that I needed it ASAP. The last one for a class I bought was ~$5 for the ebook and ~$16 for the paperback with a $2 resale value. But I HAD to buy that, and needed it quickly. If I had a choice I'd have bought neither.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by stickybuns

After downloading half-a-dozen books in quick succession, it suddenly dawned on me that I had no desire whatsoever to read Amish romance novels. (Seriously, what's with all the Amish romance novels? Are the Pennsylvania Dutch really a major target audience for ebooks?)

[astra]

Originally Posted by JDK1962

I respect the principled stand, but I don't think I could do it. I'd feel like I was giving the publisher way too much control over my reading, and would go around the wall. If I was really mad at the publisher, or about the pricing, I'd do it in a way that deliberately deprived the publisher of a sale, i.e., buy a DTB second-hand.

I feel as if my willingness to put up with crap has gone down as I've gotten older.

Oh, I do find ways to obtain the book and read it. No way I would let those greedy bastards to control what I want to read.

[TenaciousBadger]

I have certain authors I almost buy automatically even if they belong to the big 5 (or 6, or how many they are ).

Now I said "almost" because there's a recent book coming out from one of those authors, whose price is over $17. And I have to admit, it gave me pause, no matter how much I want to read the book, or the fact that I have read all the other bazillion books in the series or that this one seems to be the series' conclusion. I can't get my mind round one word: rip-off!

I will grudgingly shell out around $13.79 or something for an ebook by my favourite authors but $17 is just too dang much.

And even though I get few freebies where I am from, I don't download them indiscriminately just because they cost $0.00 or $0.99, so that price selection criterion does not apply much either.

[tubemonkey]

I boycott all books above $0.00

[grumpy3b]

Wow, Piper_, that pricing is just nuts. I checked it and can't believe Penguin is in this too. I remember Penguin from my younger years as an inexpensive imprint with very good titles in the genres I enjoy. Sad to see where they are today. But nearly 100% more for the ebook version is basically saying they don't want to sell to anyone with even just half-a-wit. Perfect example of Agency pricing gone horribly wrong.

Originally Posted by Piper_

I think most of the complaints are about ebook prices in relation to the pbook prices.

Titles/contents aren't fungible, but the sources for them are.

e.g, I want the SKPenman trilogy. The second two ebooks in the trilogy are a crazy 19.99 each ($10 in hard and paper). I purchased the first book new at Amazon in paper, so they'd be paid, intending to go get it off the darknet*. Of course, then I couldn't find it.

The next 2 in the trilogy, I'll just buy as used copies for a few bucks, and scan them. And curse them that I have to. I totally lost the desire to see that they're paid even a dime.

For my bonus answer: I choose 90% historical fiction, and I try to read in order - I'll read all I can about a certain decade or family line.

The other 10% is given to indulging in a bodice-ripping romance. I still usually stick with medievals or regency, but I don't expect it to be informative or accurate. It's just a sweet desert.

*eta: at the time, it was not available for sale as an ebook. It was taken down for about 9 months, ostensibly to fix typos. It is back up now, and I would buy it at the current price of 11, if I hadn't been sucked into paying for the pbook, and if the two following weren't priced at $19.99.

[emalvick]

If Price were my only factor, I'd probably never even notice that there are books that cost more than a few books. After all, a sort by price will show you that there are 100's if not 1000's of books in the free to $2.99 category.

However, it pains me when I am looking into picking up books that I'd love to read (I'm reading a lot of more recent classics these days) that the paperback book costs around $5 and the ebook costs around $12 to $14. When that happens, price does play a factor. I will not by an ebook (or the associated paperback) in that situation. Instead, it forces me to use a library. If it is a book I know well and have already read, I wait on it, figuring that some day this ridiculous business model will become practical. If it is a book I really want to read, I may make an exception, but I haven't done that, yet... although I did pay more for an ebook than paperback in the case of a book that was at a $5.99 vs. $6.50 type price. Heck, I can chalk that difference up to Sales Tax or shipping.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Astra, I think that is a nonsense statement. Would you spend $70 on an ebook even if the summary was interesting but the author was wholly unknown to you? Based on your statement, you would because price is immaterial. I read a lot of books every year and buy significantly more than I can read, but I wouldn't even look at the synopsis of a $70 novel from an unknown author -- I would immediately pass the book by based on its price alone.

It is the text and the time it cost to read that is interesting. So the answer here is that the book could cost $1 instead of $70 and I would not buy it if I was not going to read it. And to decide to read it I need more informations.

[tponzo]

Interestingly enough I just ran into this dilema. I really like Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series. The eagerly awaited 11th book just came out this week. The hardcover once you factor in various vendor discounts, coupons etc. can be found for about $14.75. (on B&N and Amazon, similar on Borders). The ebook is $14.99 and I can't use any coupons on it. I absolutely refuse to pay more or even the same price for a digital copy of a book than for a hard cover copy. I will probably buy the hard cover (because I don't want to deprive Ms. Harris of the revenue) and find a digital copy "elsewhere" for a whole lot less.

Once again this is where if publishers were smart they would listen to those of us who keep bringing up the idea of bundling. I would be more than happy to pay the full hard cover price plus maybe up to five dollars extra for a hard cover book bundled with a digital copy of the same book.

[ficbot]

Tponzo, I got the ebook at kobo for $9.99. Read it yesterday and it was not that good :-)