4 ms·

I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? $15 for a recent release really isn't a bad deal in my opinion. Books are a value compared to most othe

by jsz0 17y ago

I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? $15 for a recent release really isn't a bad deal in my opinion. Books are a value compared to most other forms of entertainment. A new release movie costs you $15-$25 and it's only 2 or 3 hours of entertainment. A new release video game costs $50-$60 and is probably pretty close to the number of hours of entertainment a book offers. A CD is $10-$15 for up to 70 minutes of entertainment. That's simplifying it a bit since we should consider the re-consumption value of each medium but I think it's worth considering that a book has quite a bit of consumer value. I think it's also worth considering that the number of people who actually read books has been on the decline for some time. I'm not sure a lower e-book pricing model makes up the difference. Are people more likely to read if a book is $5 instead of $10? Doubtful since libraries have books for free and most people still don't read that much.

bugs 17y ago
Libraries aren't exactly convenient for normal consumers. To go against your video game and cd relation to a book: Video Games are targeted to a very large market and the majority of games today tend to offer much more than 2 or 3 hours of entertainment especially if you take the case of online play; CDs are in a market that is surrounded by piracy and yells of corruption but to take the price point a cd usually offers much more value than 70 minutes of entertainment and one popular way to consume music and purchase it is through itunes which does indeed offer lower prices for basically the same content.
cmelbye 17y ago
Why was this post voted down? It was very insightful. Is voting down if one disagrees with the post okay or something?
Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
For me (and I don't claim this calculus works for anyone else) an ebook is overpriced if I can get a discounted or used copy of a print version for the same amount or less. The print copy has intrinsic value; I can resell it, lend it out, donate it to a "books for prisoners" program or leave it to my grandkids; it requires no additional hardware, and I'll be able to read it anywhere, anytime for the rest of my life. If I drop it down a sewer grate or forget it in a cab, I'm out no more than the replacement cost of the book (which is probably out in paperback now). If I throw it in a box in the attic and leave it there, barring the Rise of the Silverfish I'll be able to pull the box back down again in ten years and pick right back up reading it again. But the electronic copy has no intrinsic value; I can't resell it, lend it out, or donate it; it requires additional hardware to use, and I can only read it on the platform(s) the vendor allows me to read it on for as long as the vendor allows me to read it. If I'm reading on my PC, I can't change platforms or upgrade my OS unless the proprietary reader software is available for the platform/OS I'm moving to. If the vendor decides to adopt another format or leave the business entirely, my books suddenly have a drop-dead date: once my hardware breaks, I lose the titles I've bought forever. A lot of these issues go away with non-DRMed titles, but in all but a few cases (bulky tech reference titles for example) a DRM-free eBook is still unlikely to be worth as much to me as the print version. And you really don't want to get into the "dollars per hour" argument here. The iPhone game I just finished up cost me a dollar and I got a good 20+ hours of play time out of it. But I can get through an average-sized book in four or five hours, so if I went by price per enjoyment-hour, it'd make that book worth about twenty-five cents. (I'm cheap, but not that cheap...)
- mmt 17y ago
  I can't upvote you enough :) The calculus works for me, as well, with a twist. I place very little intrinsic value on the paper book, myself, other than as a delivery mechanism. As you point out, however, since I can resell it, the market places non-zero value on some instances of paper books[1]. Since the value, for me, is entirely in the convenience of delivery, hardback books, by their bulkier, heavier nature, have less value than mass market paperbacks. I even wrinkle my nose at "trade" paperbacks[2]. The size of the current crop of e-readers fail to be no larger than a mass market paperback, even the silly extra-tall ones. An electronic copy, to me, does have some intrinsic value in that it's searchable, but that's primarily interesting for the bulky tech reference titles you allude to. Everything else is delivery. I'm only willing to pay the full $8 price when I'm desperate, having nothing with me to read, but a local bookstore having something I know I'd buy eventually anyway. It's something I try to avoid by thinking ahead. Otherwise, for a brand new book, the Costco $6ish is my limit, and that's typically only for the more popular releases. Otherwise, it's $2-$5 at the used bookstore or online. In contrast, perhaps since I'm not an avid game-player, or, perhaps because I read for pleasure 2-3 slower than I could, I find the price per enjoyment-hour to be one that makes some sense. This leads to a desire for a subscription model, since, after all, I can only read one book at a time. It would allow me to try out a writer without forking over my time and the cost of a whole book. Moreover, I'd be happy to pay several times as much for a 1k+ page Pynchon tome as for a pulpy novella or something in between[3]. If such a system were to pay royalties based on usage, I would expect it to encourage writing that's a balance between being so light as to be skimmable and so involved as to be inaccessible. I believe this to be a desirable consequence, though I recognize the danger in, if I may abuse the term, engineering regression toward the mean. [1] This is on the order of $1 per item, in trade, at my local used bookstore. It's often $0. [2] though some can mostly fit in a pant pocket, especially the Canadian Costco cargo pants I favor [3] all of which I enjoy, but I can't fathom paying full price for 150 pages consumable in one sitting.
GHFigs 17y ago
I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? Many years of rhetoric about other industries' transitions from atoms to bits have left many with the mistaken impression that the price should gravitate toward the cost of moving and storing the bits rather than the value in their particular arrangement. The peak of this way of thinking was AllOfMP3, that dubiously legal Russian site that used to sell music by the megabyte. There were people who actually considered that fair and reasonable. Fortunately we're all a little more used to the idea of paying for bits these days, but the tendency to under-estimate their worth is persistent.
- mmt 17y ago
  the mistaken impression that the price should gravitate toward the cost of moving and storing the bits rather than the value in their particular arrangement I disagree that the impression was mistaken. I also disagree that it was rhetoric about digitization that produced such an impression. Even the word "publisher" means distributor, not content creator (or bit arranger, if you will). Consumers therefore have a reasonable expectation that the value they're paying for is the delivery of the content to them in a convenient fashion.
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    I'm arguing for the portion of the bit-arranging that the publisher (or record label or movie studio) is responsible for. I think we tend to under-estimate that, probably for the simple reason that it is invisible to us. I'm not about to argue that they deserve every last cent they demand, though. Only that pricing should be dragged down kicking and streaming by what the market is willing to bear for the content and not encouraged to free-fall until it barely covers the cost of the bit-moving. As much as I may want cheap books, I can sympathize with a publisher's desire to not get bitch-slapped by the invisible hand. (Also: I'm usually opposed to meta-discussion about moderation, but I did want you to know that I am not the ass-hat that voted you to zero.)

by jsz0 17y ago

bugs 17y ago

Libraries aren't exactly convenient for normal consumers. To go against your video game and cd relation to a book: Video Games are targeted to a very large market and the majority of games today tend to offer much more than 2 or 3 hours of entertainment especially if you take the case of online play; CDs are in a market that is surrounded by piracy and yells of corruption but to take the price point a cd usually offers much more value than 70 minutes of entertainment and one popular way to consume music and purchase it is through itunes which does indeed offer lower prices for basically the same content.

cmelbye 17y ago

Why was this post voted down? It was very insightful. Is voting down if one disagrees with the post okay or something?

Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago

For me (and I don't claim this calculus works for anyone else) an ebook is overpriced if I can get a discounted or used copy of a print version for the same amount or less. The print copy has intrinsic value; I can resell it, lend it out, donate it to a "books for prisoners" program or leave it to my grandkids; it requires no additional hardware, and I'll be able to read it anywhere, anytime for the rest of my life. If I drop it down a sewer grate or forget it in a cab, I'm out no more than the replacement cost of the book (which is probably out in paperback now). If I throw it in a box in the attic and leave it there, barring the Rise of the Silverfish I'll be able to pull the box back down again in ten years and pick right back up reading it again. But the electronic copy has no intrinsic value; I can't resell it, lend it out, or donate it; it requires additional hardware to use, and I can only read it on the platform(s) the vendor allows me to read it on for as long as the vendor allows me to read it. If I'm reading on my PC, I can't change platforms or upgrade my OS unless the proprietary reader software is available for the platform/OS I'm moving to. If the vendor decides to adopt another format or leave the business entirely, my books suddenly have a drop-dead date: once my hardware breaks, I lose the titles I've bought forever. A lot of these issues go away with non-DRMed titles, but in all but a few cases (bulky tech reference titles for example) a DRM-free eBook is still unlikely to be worth as much to me as the print version. And you really don't want to get into the "dollars per hour" argument here. The iPhone game I just finished up cost me a dollar and I got a good 20+ hours of play time out of it. But I can get through an average-sized book in four or five hours, so if I went by price per enjoyment-hour, it'd make that book worth about twenty-five cents. (I'm cheap, but not that cheap...)

mmt 17y ago
I can't upvote you enough :) The calculus works for me, as well, with a twist. I place very little intrinsic value on the paper book, myself, other than as a delivery mechanism. As you point out, however, since I can resell it, the market places non-zero value on some instances of paper books[1]. Since the value, for me, is entirely in the convenience of delivery, hardback books, by their bulkier, heavier nature, have less value than mass market paperbacks. I even wrinkle my nose at "trade" paperbacks[2]. The size of the current crop of e-readers fail to be no larger than a mass market paperback, even the silly extra-tall ones. An electronic copy, to me, does have some intrinsic value in that it's searchable, but that's primarily interesting for the bulky tech reference titles you allude to. Everything else is delivery. I'm only willing to pay the full $8 price when I'm desperate, having nothing with me to read, but a local bookstore having something I know I'd buy eventually anyway. It's something I try to avoid by thinking ahead. Otherwise, for a brand new book, the Costco $6ish is my limit, and that's typically only for the more popular releases. Otherwise, it's $2-$5 at the used bookstore or online. In contrast, perhaps since I'm not an avid game-player, or, perhaps because I read for pleasure 2-3 slower than I could, I find the price per enjoyment-hour to be one that makes some sense. This leads to a desire for a subscription model, since, after all, I can only read one book at a time. It would allow me to try out a writer without forking over my time and the cost of a whole book. Moreover, I'd be happy to pay several times as much for a 1k+ page Pynchon tome as for a pulpy novella or something in between[3]. If such a system were to pay royalties based on usage, I would expect it to encourage writing that's a balance between being so light as to be skimmable and so involved as to be inaccessible. I believe this to be a desirable consequence, though I recognize the danger in, if I may abuse the term, engineering regression toward the mean. [1] This is on the order of $1 per item, in trade, at my local used bookstore. It's often $0. [2] though some can mostly fit in a pant pocket, especially the Canadian Costco cargo pants I favor [3] all of which I enjoy, but I can't fathom paying full price for 150 pages consumable in one sitting.

GHFigs 17y ago

I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? Many years of rhetoric about other industries' transitions from atoms to bits have left many with the mistaken impression that the price should gravitate toward the cost of moving and storing the bits rather than the value in their particular arrangement. The peak of this way of thinking was AllOfMP3, that dubiously legal Russian site that used to sell music by the megabyte. There were people who actually considered that fair and reasonable. Fortunately we're all a little more used to the idea of paying for bits these days, but the tendency to under-estimate their worth is persistent.

mmt 17y ago
the mistaken impression that the price should gravitate toward the cost of moving and storing the bits rather than the value in their particular arrangement I disagree that the impression was mistaken. I also disagree that it was rhetoric about digitization that produced such an impression. Even the word "publisher" means distributor, not content creator (or bit arranger, if you will). Consumers therefore have a reasonable expectation that the value they're paying for is the delivery of the content to them in a convenient fashion.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  I'm arguing for the portion of the bit-arranging that the publisher (or record label or movie studio) is responsible for. I think we tend to under-estimate that, probably for the simple reason that it is invisible to us. I'm not about to argue that they deserve every last cent they demand, though. Only that pricing should be dragged down kicking and streaming by what the market is willing to bear for the content and not encouraged to free-fall until it barely covers the cost of the bit-moving. As much as I may want cheap books, I can sympathize with a publisher's desire to not get bitch-slapped by the invisible hand. (Also: I'm usually opposed to meta-discussion about moderation, but I did want you to know that I am not the ass-hat that voted you to zero.)