Are you prepared to pay the same price for an ebook as for the print book?

[darryl]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I don't think I'd buy an ebook that was more expensive than the new paperback, but in the UK I can't think of a situation where that has actually happened in recent years.

I don't think there's any hope for the poll - a third of us have chosen the option you regret adding!

It will still be useful because the last two options can probably be taken together for most purposes.

[maddz]

I voted I'd go for something else, but there are exceptions. A few authors I really love to read I'll buy full price ebook even if the same as a print book. I very rarely buy print books nowadays - I only buy print if it's not available in ebook and is not likely to be (orphan works, mid-list deceased authors still in copyright and so on).

As I am engaged in the slow project of replacing many of my print books, cost is a factor in my purchases.

[GeoffR]

Hypothetically I would, but in practice it has never come up because the ebooks I have bought have always been priced lower than the paper editions, usually much lower.

[rem736]

i think that it's much wiser to price the ebook lower than the paper book. production, material, and delivery costs for ebooks are much lower than the paper version. and consumers know this. so if an ebook is priced even a penny above the paper book version, the impression is that the seller isn't pricing it fairly given the lower cost. in the world of marketing, impressions matter to a significant degree.

[tomsem]

I haven't seen a lot of cases where print and ebook were the same price. Amazon for example has to set ebook price per publisher's wishes, but they can discount the print edition. Publishers don't typically set the same price for both. And used print books are often cheaper than either new or ebook.

That said, I'll pay the asking price if I want to read the book right away (though far more often I will just wish list it, check to see if I can borrow from library etc.). I don't buy print books at all unless there is no ebook edition.

[Wearever]

I voted the last option. I always wait till a new e book comes down in price, or I'll borrow it. I have not purchased a print book in years for myself. So I don't look at the print price unless I'm buying as a gift for someone who wants a print book instead.

[ekbell]

It depends on the book.

If it's an art book then I'm buying a paper copy as my preferred readers are not large.

If it's a non-art book that I particularly want I'll look for the ebook first and buy that if it's a reasonable cost. If there is no ebook or the ebook is not a reasonable cost then I'll see if there is a pbook version at a reasonable cost (new or used) and/or if our library has a copy.

However, most books I buy are ones that I've run across, found interesting and which were at a reasonable cost. If I think such a book is interesting but too expensive I'll check my library and maybe put it on a price watch but I won't normally bother checking pbook prices (I need to consider bookshelf space).

My idea of reasonable cost differs strongly depending on the reason I'm buying the book. I'm willing to spend a lot more for a book that I have a particular reason for buying then a book that I've just run across (about $6 cdn more for fiction, and considerably more for academic non-fiction).

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by ekbell

It depends on the book.

If it's an art book then I'm buying a paper copy as my preferred readers are not large.

If it's a non-art book that I particularly want I'll look for the ebook first and buy that if it's a reasonable cost. If there is no ebook or the ebook is not a reasonable cost then I'll see if there is a pbook version at a reasonable cost (new or used) and/or if our library has a copy.

However, most books I buy are ones that I've run across, found interesting and which were at a reasonable cost. If I think such a book is interesting but too expensive I'll check my library and maybe put it on a price watch but I won't normally bother checking pbook prices (I need to consider bookshelf space).

My idea of reasonable cost differs strongly depending on the reason I'm buying the book. I'm willing to spend a lot more for a book that I have a particular reason for buying then a book that I've just run across (about $6 cdn more for fiction, and considerably more for academic non-fiction).

You mean that bookshelves don't automatically grow to meet incoming book needs?
That must be what I was doing wrong. I thought they did.

[4691mls]

Library ebooks are usually my first choice, if available. If the ebook is not available from the library, or if it's a book I will want to keep and reread, I will buy it if it's at a price I am willing to pay for that particular book. I don't have a set dollar amount I will spend on a book.

I don't compare prices between ebooks and paper books. If an ebook costs more than I am willing to pay, I wait a while and hope the ebook eventually goes on sale or becomes available from the library. I will buy a paper book only if there is no epub available.

[library addict]

I have paid and will continue to pay agency pricing for books by specific authors.

There are times when books are exchangeable and I would just pick a different book to read. But more often when you want to read a specific book, only that book will do.

I miss the days of Fictionwise and getting 100% back to buy even more books. But those days are gone.

I do think agency pricing (same or more as the paperback price, over $10 for the ebook if a hardcover release) does prevent me from trying a lot of new-to-me authors. I do try a few every year, but a lot I tend to get from the library or just add to my To Be Bought list and wait for a sale.

[Tarana]

I will pay the same for an ebook as its paperback. I have no objection if they charge the same as a hardcover when it first comes out, but I never bought hard covers. I waited until the paperback came out.

edited to add: as an ebook addiction, I already have more books than I will probably read/listen to in my remaining lifetime.

[bgalbrecht]

I voted that I'll wait for a drop in price, which is almost totally true, since many publisher will put ebooks on sale for a day to goose their standings in best seller lists, but there's a very limited set of authors where I don't wait for a sale. Part of this stems from buying most of my paper books (which are mostly F/SF) used from one of the best F/SF bookstores in the world (Uncle Hugo's in Minneapolis, for the curious). I tend to be a binge buyer, and buy more than I can read in a week or two, so I always have a huge TBR backlog. This makes it hard for me to justify to myself spending $10 or more on a book, and for most authors, that upper limit is probably more like $5.

My personal viewpoint on book pricing, which might not reflect how publishers and authors view book pricing, is that paper book pricing is based on timeliness and scarcity, and maybe also the cost of print runs, and that ebook pricing is based on what the market will bear without cannibalizing print too much. So hardcover is expensive, partly because it costs a buck or two more to make than trade or mass market paperback, partly because the print run is smaller and there are fewer copies available, and the price/book is higher with a smaller print run, partly because the publisher is relying on the hardcover to recoup more of the upfront costs of making a book (author advance, copyediting costs, publisher overhead), and partly because people are getting A NEW BOOK before the hoi polloi do so the hardcover buyer can use it to impress people. Trade paperbacks are cheaper to make than hardcover, but not all that much, but still have a smaller print run. Mass market has the highest print run, cheapest book printing and if it's not a MMPB only book, it's for the price conscious buyers who waited years for it to come out. And then you have the really price conscious buyers who wait until the hardcover is remaindered, or the books show up at used book stores, library sales, etc., where the price can be pretty much anywhere from a quarter to have the suggested retail price.

Ebooks, on the other hand, cost pennies per copy once the original production costs are recouped. And the current production book editing software can pretty much generate the paper editions and the various ebook editions all at once, so once any edition is created, there's hardly anything left to do. This might not be entirely true for all books, some still have layouts that might be hard to emulate in epub and Kindle formats. I suspect this is partly the rationale for holding one day sales for $1.99 or $2.99 to goose a book into bestseller status. It cuts into profits, but it may not take that many additional sales to recover the loss. Anyway, the publishers price the ebook lower than a hardcover or trade paperback because there's an expectation that large retailers are going to discount them 20% or more, so if it's a agency pricing publisher, they need to discount the ebook, or a lot of ebook or nothing readers will consider buying the book.

While I think that at the end of the sales life of a mass market paperback, the publishers ought to be thinking about cutting the ebook price in half to match the used book market, I don't expect that to ever happen. This is because the publishers don't even like to acknowledge the used book market exists, and a lot of books can be hard to find at any given used bookseller, whereas ebooks are always available. Also, if the publishers drop the price to about half MMPB, their view is that this hurts the MMPB market because the price conscious buyers will just wait longer to get a cheaper book and instead of picking up either the MMPB or ebook, which are usually the same price, they'll switch to the really cheap ebook. One thing I do sometimes see is that the print/ebook rights revert to the author, and they can be more willing to discount their ebook price from the MMPB price. And, for many authors, they've already got all they can from the publisher, they can price the ebook cheaper and still get at least as much per ebook than what they got from the publisher, and the lower price might bump their sales to boot.

[Timboli]

I would never pay the same price for an ebook as the physical book, unless of course, the physical book was probably cheaper than it should be. I do however base any ebook purchase on fair pricing, so as a long as the price meets that, I don't care about physical book price.

Book pricing can get very complex, unless you stick to some kind of standard.
You can base the price on number of words, author reputation, presumed story quality, research engaged in, genre, etc.

While I recognize the many benefits of an ebook, I don't see why I should pay for those, unless they somehow were a cost to the publisher/author. People can be very blind in that regard, and buy based on feelings rather than sense. Like so many things these days, people, especially the young, seem to have more money than sense, especially in the affluent western world.

P.S. And really, at the end of the day, you are not just paying for an ebook, but an ereader (maybe more than one) also. Many people still balk at that outlay, and many are not huge readers, which makes the ereader and ebook even more costly.

P.S.S. If ebook sales are indeed going down, which seems to be the case, then it is not surprising really, as one of the benefits lauded was a cost saving, which is all too often, not the case, not significantly anyway. Couple that with the cost of an ereader, and issues many have with eyes and tablets, and I am not surprised of the current scenario ... and that's not even mentioning deliberate sabotage by some publishers.

[DNSB]

My wife loves the In Death series. The latest book Secrets in Death which is due out 2017-Sep-05 is priced at $15.99Cdn for ebook (Amazon.ca and Kobo CA) while the paperback is priced at $10.99 (marked down at Amazon to $9.68Cdn, Chapters-Indigo to $9.78Cdn).

This is fairly typical of the pricing I see for popular new releases -- gouge those ebook reading suckers -- a quick check shows that 7 of the last 9 books my wife purchased were priced at $4 to $9Cdn. over the price of the mass market paperback.

At least at Baen, they drop the price of their ebooks when the paperback is released and the ebooks prices are lower than the paperback to start with. They are up front about the "you want it first" tax.

I have difficulty understanding how the producer of an ebook which does not require printing, binding, shipping, handling returns, etc. is able to justify pricing an ebook at a higher price than a paperback version. I understand that ebooks share the editing, cover design, and other costs of print books and there is some cost for formatting of the ebook but expecting me to believe that the cost of formatting an ebook is that much more than the life cycle cost of a mass market paperback? I've believed as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast but this outstrips my ability to suspend my reality checker.

[AnemicOak]

Secrets in Death comes out in digital and hardcover 5 Sep 2017. Like all In Death books the paperback comes out 6 months later (in this case 2 Jan 2018) and the digital price is usually dropped by the publisher at the same time. If you want it on release in Sept. the options are $15.99 for the eBook or $31.57 ($36.00 list price) for the hardcover.