My OperaWhy do Ebooks cost so much?
Wednesday, August 1, 2007 11:18:46 AM
Ive loved reading ebooks since i got my first Palm. You can keep them forever and dont need to throw them away - no shelf space required and can store thousands on a hard drive. They have to be the way forward. The environmental costs must make them attractive too - no paper pulp, low distribution costs.
I know most people prefer a book and I respect that. But so many people now have a device cpapable of storing and displaying a library that surely the convenience outweighs the other factors. Try it - give it a chance you may like it. I ve had a Palm Zire 31 since they first came out and I really like the backlit decent sized screen for reading. An improvement on the m100 it replaced. I know Pdas are going out of fashion but the bigger screen size makes it a viable multimedia machine compared to most phones.
The one thing that does suck big time though is the pricing strategy that the big distributors use. A hardback costs about $15 and an ebook of it also costs $15. Despite pretty much 0 distribution and creation costs. Same goes for paperback , most publishers cost the ebook exactly the same as the paperback. Despite the fact the ebook costs nothing to distribute and create after the original formatting. Why? It seems to me this is an attempt to deliberately keep ebooks from replacing the existing medium. I can understand this from the bookstore point of view it undermines their marketing paradigm. But Amazon is an online distribution mechanism and they also price badly.
The only publisher I can find with a good pricing model is Baen books.(An extensive selection of free ebooks and the rest cheap $4 - $6 ) Baen are good but limit themselves to publication of military SF - ok some fantasy too. If anyone knows of other good distributors of ebooks let me know.
I know most people prefer a book and I respect that. But so many people now have a device cpapable of storing and displaying a library that surely the convenience outweighs the other factors. Try it - give it a chance you may like it. I ve had a Palm Zire 31 since they first came out and I really like the backlit decent sized screen for reading. An improvement on the m100 it replaced. I know Pdas are going out of fashion but the bigger screen size makes it a viable multimedia machine compared to most phones.
The one thing that does suck big time though is the pricing strategy that the big distributors use. A hardback costs about $15 and an ebook of it also costs $15. Despite pretty much 0 distribution and creation costs. Same goes for paperback , most publishers cost the ebook exactly the same as the paperback. Despite the fact the ebook costs nothing to distribute and create after the original formatting. Why? It seems to me this is an attempt to deliberately keep ebooks from replacing the existing medium. I can understand this from the bookstore point of view it undermines their marketing paradigm. But Amazon is an online distribution mechanism and they also price badly.
The only publisher I can find with a good pricing model is Baen books.(An extensive selection of free ebooks and the rest cheap $4 - $6 ) Baen are good but limit themselves to publication of military SF - ok some fantasy too. If anyone knows of other good distributors of ebooks let me know.
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