by mwlcarter » Wed Apr 21, 2010 6:16 am
Personally, I think $5 is the magic number for e-book pricing. With virtually zero production cost, $5 divvied up between publisher and author probably still leaves both parties with more profits than they make off a mass-market paperback. If they want to charge, say, $6.99 for new releases, that'd be fine, but backlist books need to be $5 or less.
With paper books, they start off with the premium hardcover price (justified by the new release status and the hardcover format), then about a year later the price drops by two-thirds with the release of the mass-market paperback version. There's also the remaindered book market, where hardcovers usually cost less than paperbacks. In contrast, with e-books, publishers are trying to sell us a digital product for the price of a physical product, and the price remains the same in perpetuity. It's crazy that it's cheaper for me to go buy a remaindered hardcover than it is to buy an e-book.
I also simply refuse to pay more for an e-book than a paperback, and quite frankly I think the paperback at the same price is a better deal, because you're receiving a product you can hold in your hands and there's a perception that there's actually value to what you've just paid for. Paying the same or more for a virtual object compared to a physical object just doesn't work... people understand intellectually that the value is in the words that make up the book, but emotionally we immediately question why we're paying the same when we're not receiving a physical product in return.
Regarding e-books, I expect I'll start buying them in the future if/when they're reasonably priced, simply because I've not only run out of room on my shelves, but I've also run out of room for shelves. And it's nice to know that unlike my current library which can burn down with my house, an e-book library is safely backed up on the Internet, ready to be downloaded again in case of system failure. As for eReaders, I've recently ordered the Kobo eReader, which supports PDF and ePub, and is much less expensive than other ereaders (it's $149, coming closer to the $99 price which is where I think ereaders will really take off...).
Of course, as e-books become more prevalent, I think that the whole publisher model itself is going to be threatened. As an author, why should I go through a publisher if I can produce my own e-book through Lulu, or simply issue my book in PDF format?