Ebook price comparisons

[jchestnutt]

I just discovered ebookprice.info towards the end of last week. I had been writing my own thing last week (http://book-find.appspot.com) to aggregate the results from a bunch of sites, but I've only gotten 4-5 stores included so far. I had gotten tired of going around doing the same search at a bunch of different sites, and I wanted to try out the Google App Engine.

However, it seems ebookprice.info already did the equivalent and did it better. I'm not thrilled with their interface, but they include more stores and don't have to worry about individual stores timing out.

[Boyodublin]

I used the ebookprice.info website (very useful tool) to investigate prices on a few current titles, and was absolutely appalled at the levels of cost differentiation. It seems that one of the principle cost formulas is based on the actual format the text is in, including mobi, epub, Pcr,etc. This of course may have more to do with what particular unit is used to read the text--Kindle, Sony reader, etc.

Now I understand another reason to fight for a single format that could be used on all reading units.

With so much free literature available already, of incredible standard I might add, it seems illogical to price new books out of the market. There is definitely a more sinister philosophy or plan behind the current pricing structures.

I will make my stand right here and now to proclaim that
"I, JK, will not purchase an ebook that is priced above $9.99."

Please consider joining me in taking a stand and signing onto a similar short msg. Maybe we can have the 'powers that be' listen to our complaint and get a response.
Am I still dreaming?

[hike_gc]

Out of curiosity I went to the ebookprice.info site and entered the title "Day With a Perfect Stranger" by David Gregory. I had about 5 different stores come up with the results sorted by file type.

There was also a line at the top of the grid that said for the CyberRead store to use a certain coupon code which would get me $3.56 off a book originally priced at $14.25. In this case it turned out CyberRead has the best price if I use the coupon code. So I guess the lesson is to look at the screen a little more carefully when your search results come up. You might just get a coupon code to use.

EbookPrice could clean up their interface a bit, but for now it is better than visiting each website myself.

By the way, CyberRead has a link on their site to get 40% off your next order if you submit a review on a book. Now that's a deal.

[emellaich]

Originally Posted by Boyodublin

Let's start a movement on MobileRead to insist that all e books be priced at a $5 flat rate. I'm sure sales would rocket and the new ebook technology soar!

According to a post on this URL:
http://answers.google.com/answers/th.../id/50620.html

The average sales for a new book is 2,000 copies. Large trade sales are between 5,000 and 10,000 copies. Of course, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, and others blow these numbers out of the water.

So, let's say a book sales 5,000 and a writer can write one book per year. How much should the writer make per year? Let's say $30,000. Then the author alone needs to make $6 per book. Ok, we'll write two books per year, and they still need make $3 per book. On top of that figure we add the costs and profits for the editor, the distribution channel (e.g., Amazon), marketing, and miscellaneous costs.

The problem is that the sales volume isn't 100,000 versus 1,000,000. It's 2,000 versus 10,000.

[Panda Rose]

At least you have so many places to choose from in the US. We do not have such choice here in the UK.

[spinoza]

I recently read that less than 10% of published authors ever see any royalties or monetary gain from their books. Indeed, it is not uncommon for authors to have to pay significant printing fees for having a publisher accept their work. I know that I, as an academic, have never seen anything in the way of a check for my many publications (admittedly mostly articles). Right now book pricing is dictated largely by the business/corporate needs of the publishing houses themselves, and what it costs for them to maintain a profit. Here too most publishing houses are really quite modest affairs, with only a handful of employees (calling them a "house" has more than a grain of truth here!).

I think these are all signs of a dysfunctional industry running on its last legs. Ebooks are a way to address the many problems in book publishing, but a new, truly viable, ebook industry has yet to emerge. At the moment we are experiencing a rather primitive cloning of traditional publishing practices onto an emerging ebook industry, which is why we are seeing such wild variations in pricing. Geez, I just checked cyberread, and the book I am interested in costs $57 there, while Barnes & Noble has it for $9.99!

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by goldilocks

This site http://www.ebookprice.info/ did not find all these prices. I got an error on the page. It found the book and when I clicked on the link it came up with three prices. I went back to check again and now all I get is “Internal Server Error”.

This page usually doesn't find the books I want (I think I look for before they update their data )

[Terisa de morgan]

I've reading this discussion and I've just noted a weird thing? Has any of you mentioned e-publisher? I usually read mainly romance or romantika and, in that field, there're quite a lot of publishers which normally don't publish in print. Their books can be, or not, in Fictionwise or Books On Board, but there're another bookshops (like MyBooksAndMore) which include them. Don't you know them? Don't you think they're important? And we're not talking about new enterprises, some or them are more than four years old.

[goldilocks]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

This page usually doesn't find the books I want (I think I look for before they update their data )

Yup, must have been my problem too. Coming up with lots of selections now (except the Kindle one-but I don't need that one!) Sony is the cheapest!

[Boyodublin]

Originally posted by: emellaich
The problem is that the sales volume isn't 100,000 versus 1,000,000. It's 2,000 versus 10,000.

Wow..I had no idea!
Thank you for this enlightening piece of info.

It definitely makes more sense to me now that writers sell directly to the audience, us, and not bother going through a publisher. The only thing to figure out is how to entice readers to purchase a book directly.......word of mouth sounds like the in thing....
I have purchased numerous books directly from folks who post on this blog. What a great way to effect change...

Thanks emellaich for taking the time to explain this.

[pdurrant]

It's quite common for authors not to see any royalties. But they do get money - it's paid up-front, an "advance" against future royalties. It's just that their books don't sell enough copies for the royalties due to exceed the advance.

Any publisher charging an author money to get in print isn't a commercial publisher, but a vanity publisher. Vanity publishers make their money from the authors, not from people buying the books!

Academic publishing is very different from commercial publishing, and works by its own rules. And I suspect traditional academic publishers aren't going to survive for much longer (Charging the universities to get articles into the journals and then charging the universities for the journals? Wow!).

I think the big difference that's yet to happen in ebook publishing is the reduction in the number of middle-men, and a reduction in the cut taken by retailers. (Oh, and the elimination of DRM for ebook sales.)

Originally Posted by spinoza

I recently read that less than 10% of published authors ever see any royalties or monetary gain from their books. Indeed, it is not uncommon for authors to have to pay significant printing fees for having a publisher accept their work. I know that I, as an academic, have never seen anything in the way of a check for my many publications (admittedly mostly articles).

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Academic publishing is very different from commercial publishing, and works by its own rules. And I suspect traditional academic publishers aren't going to survive for much longer (Charging the universities to get articles into the journals and then charging the universities for the journals? Wow!).

I have never been charged (or my univesity) for publishing, only a couple of times I did have to pass some charges for colour pictures, but usually having an article published (in my field) is free. Now getting printed or electronic copies of the article once it's published is another matter.

I've been a co-author of two book chapters, for one of them I got a copy of the book (sold at around €160), for the other only the main author got the book.

[benham]

I have never checked Amazon for ebooks. Are most of them available in the epub format?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by benham

I have never checked Amazon for ebooks. Are most of them available in the epub format?

No, they're in Kindle format (AZW/Mobi and Topaz). You can only buy from them if you have a Kindle or a iPhone/Touch with the Kindle app installed.

[benham]

For Sony, I haven't found any places that are cheaper then the Sony estore itself.