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E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead
- tired_man 11y agoeBook prices are too high for what you are buying. There are no printing costs, no shipping cost, and for most books, miniscule marketing costs. Why are most eBooks more costly than their paperback counterparts?
- dragonwriter 11y agoBecause books are generally monopoly goods rather than commodities -- because of copyright, there aren't interchangeable substitutes from alternative providers -- so process aren't driven down to marginal costs by competition, but instead are driven by value to purchasers, and ebooks are more convenient to store and transport, and less vulnerable to degradation, than paperbacks, making them more valuable to enough purchasers.
- tired_man 11y agoThat may be, but inflated pricing on eBooks will put the publishers in the boat as the music industry. By your logic, there should not be any 99 cent MP3 files. They should all be priced as though they were 12 inch singles. Files are files. Sell me something physical and it had to be created. Files? Nope. eBooks are still being price fixed. Plain and simple. Even Baen admits to raising their eBook prices to match other vendors, even though they've capped theirs based on their own hardcopy prices. Whether there is collusion or not I wouldn't venture a guess. Before Mr. Baen died, I would say no. Sell by volume and sell more.