Posts Tagged ‘stupidity’
Why are ebooks expensive?
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
February 4th 2010
Seriously! What the fugg?. OK, I got an ebook reader. I love it. I go to bed with it and even take baths with it.
Have I got books? Sure. Shedloads. Downloaded in various formats over the years and converted by myself to a readable format.
Once in a while though I like to buy new books. Pay my way as it were.
So I go to online retailers thinking “hmmm, for sure this ought to be cheaper as an e-book than a hard copy?”
Why? because
- only one copy is ever produced – ever ever
- no paper
- no binding
- no printing costs
- no storage costs (more than a few Kb on a server)
- no postage
- I use my own bandwidth to download
- no handling by any people once the book is done
- not ever out of order
Appearantly, to publishers, these factors have no impact on the price of books.
The books cost the same as physical copies, if not more expensive, and they are also constructed so that no one but ME can read them.
All of you in the publishing industry, let me let you in on a dirty little secret:
It won’t work.
Seriously, trying to make me reading this on my ebook reader more unattractive than actually buying the physical book is silly.
Reminds me of the early MP3 services which over charged (here is looking at you iTunes) their users. If people feel ripped off, they will not buy things.
I know how much it costs to make a copy of something digital. If I drag a file to an email message and send that to a friend I have made a copy. Cost to me: absolutely none. Let me up this stake, I send the same file to 100 of my closest friends. Cost is still the same.
Considering the state of the forests around the world, you should really encouraging new ways to enjoy your products. Branch out so to speak (pun intended).
Of course I understand that you want a return on your investment in some authors.
You won’t get that by ripping off customers who want to be legal. You know why? We do not think that it is priced right. I want to support my authors. I really do. I also know that you publishers constantly rip them off, and they don’t generally see any of the profits you make from the books.
OK, so selling a book online at a cheaper price means that you will not make as big a profit as producing one book and then selling it at full price to thousands of people.
Considering your massive save mentioned above, I think a price cut in electronic books should be in order.
So far I have only found one fairly decently priced online shop at Mobipocket.com. Still they are expensive, and they have some books only available in certain countries, but at least they have bargains too.
So tell you what – lower the price, or I will continue visiting the library – OK?
Update! Appearantly I am not the only one aware of this stupidity
It’s not finished
Monday, March 16th, 2009
March 16th 2009
No by all means it is not, but at least it is live so I can relax and do some other things that need doing. Man I hate when I set my deadlines like co complete mofo.
