E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
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Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#2Is this surprising when you are charged similarly for print and digital copies despite the production costs being nowhere near the same? Ebooks were supposed to be the cost effective, cut out the middlemen, pay the author directly format.
What wasn't accounted for was that the book indexers have no incentive to pass on their savings to the consumer.
edit: Let's not forget the artificial restrictions imposed by DRM, either. How difficult is it to share a digital book vs physical?
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#3One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is over $10 these days.
They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#4I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks.
A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing:
Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00
All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy.
Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing structure offered time and again.
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#5I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks. A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing: Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00 All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy. Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing…
Turns out Amazon knew what they were doing when they were selling ebooks for cheaper. The publishers come in with agency pricing and boom, sales plummet.
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#6Is this surprising when you are charged similarly for print and digital copies despite the production costs being nowhere near the same? Ebooks were supposed to be the cost effective, cut out the middlemen, pay the author directly format. What wasn't accounted for was that the book indexers have no incentive to pass on their savings to the consumer. edit: Let's not forget the artificial restrictions imposed by DRM, e…
Yeap. DRM is the reason I don't buy e-books. When I am done with a book I want to be able to give it away or loan it out.
I have also discovered that the ebook is not fully stored on my tablet, so I can't read it offline. (Google books)
So forget e-books. If I buy a real book, I know I have the entire book!
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#7I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks. A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing: Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00 All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy. Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing…
> Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy.
Especially since ebooks are small enough that you can download them in seconds.
I love getting juiced for out-of-print books, especially ones that are in that gray area where the author and his direct descendants are dead and buried, but copyright lives on.
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#8One word: price. E-book prices have soared! Almost everything on Amazon is over $10 these days. They're often going for more than the paperback price, and certainly more than the prices you'd find at a discount bookseller.
I imagine the ebook is the one both providing greater value, and having a harder time competing for production resources -- while paper may be overcapacity now.
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#9Buried paragraph at the end of the article that discounts the entire piece (as a piece about readers rather than as a piece about publishers):
"It is also possible that a growing number of people are still buying and reading e-books, just not from traditional publishers. The declining e-book sales reported by publishers do not account for the millions of readers who have migrated to cheap and plentiful self-published e-books, which often cost less than a dollar."
Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead
#10I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks. A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing: Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00 All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy. Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing…
Turns out Amazon knew what they were doing when they were selling ebooks for cheaper. The publishers come in with agency pricing and boom, sales plummet.
This is what is really frustrating about the article. It spends the entire first half boosting print books like there is something magical about them that prevents them from being disrupted like movies and TV were.
>E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.
And only until near the end of the article does it reveal the actual reason why print is far from dead.
>Higher e-book prices may also be driving readers back to paper.
The publishers put print books on life support by artificially inflating the prices of e-books. They are just delaying the inevitable in my opinion.