Ebook prices drive me insane

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by rvdparis

Can anyone explain the pricing structure of eBooks or regular hardcover or softcover books? Is it market based? Is it to recoup fees? Is it marketing costs?

I would assume it is based on the publishers' and distributors' assessment of the market. Right now the e-book market is still small and filled with enthusiasts, the competition is low, so they think they can get away with high prices. In France there is one big name distributor only, FNAC. I hope things will be more reasonable once Amazon steps in

Edit: Sorry, I re-read your question - my answer is only for e-books prices of course

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by rvdparis

Just a quick revival of this thread:

Can anyone explain the pricing structure of eBooks or regular hardcover or softcover books? Is it market based? Is it to recoup fees? Is it marketing costs?

Market-based... except that publishers don't understand the market and are guessing blindly.

So can anyone explain

1. Why ebooks are expensive at all?

2. and why ebooks could possibly be more expensive than their hard/softcover counterparts, or why ebooks on certain sites can be 2 or 3x more expensive than on their publisher sites, or Amazon.com?

Publishers have in their heads a "minimum cost for books" that's about 30% lower than standard paperback prices. For printed books, this is about right--it takes a certain amount of money to cover all the production, distribution, and storage costs, and even if a single book drops below that level for whatever reason, the costs over several production runs average out.

This cost includes the fact that if they produced lines of books at half or lower of standard pback prices, customers would demand to know what's up with all these $8 pbacks when they could be $4. (Possibly reasons some books could be cheaper: Printed on low-quality paper with less QC in the publishing process; higher print run that cuts costs; guaranteed pre-sales, like to schools; nonprofit group supporting part of the production costs. Whatever.)

The problem: Their estimates of "what it costs to produce books" includes aspects that are irrelevant to ebooks. They don't have a mental way to tag production costs for those; the tech is too new, and changing. They don't know how to estimate the "store" costs of coding for search engines and shopping carts--and effectively no inventory space costs. They don't know how to estimate production costs for format conversion, nor how to advertise to the ebook market.

They're stuck between trying to market to pbook readers who want "the new high-tech version of books," and ebook readers who want "reading material that doesn't weigh anything."

They don't know the market--so they invent prices out of pretty much nowhere. They have nothing to do with production costs, because production isn't standardized enough to know what those costs are yet. They have nothing to do with advertising expenses, because they're still experimenting with marketing. They have nothing to do with distribution costs, because those vary so wildly depending on ebook stores' contracts, they can't be used as a baseline.

They know all those things cost something, so they make up prices that they're pretty sure will cover all those things (plus DRM), so that when they do figure out the details, they won't have to adjust all their prices upwards, which they know will cost them sales.

Regular ebook readers have the chance to make a difference here--supporting small, independent ebookstores that sell non-DRM'd ebooks for $3-7 is a (slow) way of letting the big publishers know what the market will bear. Because they're looking for that price point.

AFTER they figure out their baseline for standard novels, they'll start figuring out how to price textbooks and tech manuals.

[bbusybookworm]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Incidentally, for UK readers, you might want to sign this.

I've signed the petition which for those who don't know is to get the UK government to zero rate the VAT on ebooks, to bring it in line with VAT on paper books.

I saw that about 50 people had signed in, which is a good start but definately need to increase to actually get the government's attention.

So I'll like to suggest that all UK eBook Lovers (Citizens and residants only currently ) sign the Petion, and do what they can to promote it and get your friends and family aware of the issue here.

If the UK government (Or any European government) takes the first step its likely that others will follow suit, benefiting all of us.

[rvdparis]

@FlorenceArt: Yes, it was FNAC. When I saw 199.95 euros for an English eBook (granted, it was a large 400 page book), I thought, that is so extravagant. Would anyone really pay that for non-printed material? Perhaps it works like iPhone apps that cost 100 euros...there is a market.

@ElfWreck: It's precisely what I feared; prices are set because people in charge don't know the market. It's capitalism for you, so contradictory.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by rvdparis

@FlorenceArt: Yes, it was FNAC. When I saw 199.95 euros for an English eBook (granted, it was a large 400 page book), I thought, that is so extravagant. Would anyone really pay that for non-printed material? Perhaps it works like iPhone apps that cost 100 euros...there is a market.

I assume this kind of book is for a very small specialized audience, who presumably values the information in the book high enough to pay the price. I have seen even higher prices on Amazon sometimes.