publishers and ebooks
Sep. 24th, 2012 07:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI'm not going to rant about the problems of locked ebooks again, I'm just going to note how the publishing industry is shooting itself in the foot regarding pricing.
Recently I've had a hankering to re-read one of my favorite books, John Wyndham's classic Trouble with Lichen. I own the paper book, but have come to dislike the clumsiness of paper, so looked on the net to see if there was an electronic version. Unable to find any unlocked versions, I reluctantly checked Amazon for a locked ebook that I fully intended to buy. What I found surprised me. At Amazon I could buy:
- a new paperback for $8.94 (most recently published edition)
or
- a locked ebook for $9.72 (Amazon's clumsy Kindle format)
How insane is that?
In general, sellers of encumbered ebooks often price them around the same or not much cheaper than paper books. This always struck me as odd, considering how I doubt that they are priced as paper books minus the paper, printing, binding, storage, and shipping. If publishers were being honest that's how they would treat their customers.
In fairness, I have to point out that Baen Books do keep the price of their ebooks to sensible fractions of their paper ones (they also sell them as unlocked books, letting you read them on any device, using any reader program you desire), accordingly I've bought a number of ebooks from them.
Recently I've had a hankering to re-read one of my favorite books, John Wyndham's classic Trouble with Lichen. I own the paper book, but have come to dislike the clumsiness of paper, so looked on the net to see if there was an electronic version. Unable to find any unlocked versions, I reluctantly checked Amazon for a locked ebook that I fully intended to buy. What I found surprised me. At Amazon I could buy:
- a new paperback for $8.94 (most recently published edition)
or
- a locked ebook for $9.72 (Amazon's clumsy Kindle format)
How insane is that?
In general, sellers of encumbered ebooks often price them around the same or not much cheaper than paper books. This always struck me as odd, considering how I doubt that they are priced as paper books minus the paper, printing, binding, storage, and shipping. If publishers were being honest that's how they would treat their customers.
In fairness, I have to point out that Baen Books do keep the price of their ebooks to sensible fractions of their paper ones (they also sell them as unlocked books, letting you read them on any device, using any reader program you desire), accordingly I've bought a number of ebooks from them.