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Print books require raw materials, physical distribution, and have to compete for shelf space (<100% of physical books are sold online). None of those costs ap
by endtime 16y ago
Print books require raw materials, physical distribution, and have to compete for shelf space (<100% of physical books are sold online). None of those costs applies to ebooks.
>At this point in time, Kindle/iPad owners tend to have more disposable income than the average book buyer.
Uh, so what?
- SamReidHughes 16y ago> Uh, so what? So money has less marginal utility to them. Is this some kind of trick question?
- endtime 16y agoSo if I am relatively wealthy, I should be willing to pay more for something that costs less to sell to me? You don't get rich by being loose with your money.
- citricsquid 16y agoI think his point is cost isn't relative to production costs but relative to what customers can afford.
- angstrom 16y agoWe still live in a physical universe. Information is physical. Those digital books take up digital storage space. Server farms have displaced distribution centers and book shelves with digital lockers. On the bright side it saves us from hoarding books we've already read and which take up space in our homes.
- mediaman 16y agoProducts aren't based on cost. They're based on value. If value is less than cost, they don't sell, and don't get made. What it cost is irrelevant. What the market will bear is what matters. Only when we achieve low barriers to entry and high competition do prices converge to cost.
- rue 16y agoAnd now "the market" is taking a hard look at where e-books should be valued at. I think those whose interest is to keep e-book prices artificially high need to come up with a better explanation: it seems to the average person (and I include myself here) completely illogical that if you have a book in a file, it somehow "costs less" (or even anywhere near the same) to print that file into a book and then transport it somewhere, involving probably dozens of people, than it does to just copy the file.
- endtime 16y agoI was responding to this: >I don't understand the assumption that ebooks should cost less than print books. Typically, if I want to buy the contents of a book, due to what I said in my above comment, it seems to me that the one with less costs to the seller should be cheaper.
- hugh3 16y agoThis argument seems to be going around in circles. The fact that the vast majority of people think that ebooks should cost less than physical books means that they should, because people's perceptions of value are what makes up the market. Now, personally I refuse to pay anything more than $0 for ebooks, since I can easily fill up my Nook with all the out-of-copyright reading material I could ever want. If I'm going to pay actual money for a book, I want it on paper so I have a guarantee that it'll still be readable in thirty years time (natural disasters notwithstanding), and because I happen to think that shelves full of books are a pretty nice thing to have.
- joshuacc 16y ago"The fact that the vast majority of people think that ebooks should cost less than physical books means that they should, because people's perceptions of value are what makes up the market." That's oversimplifying. What people think things should cost and what they are willing to actually pay may be entirely different things. Furthermore, as demonstrated by your own comment, people's ideas of what ebooks should cost varies wildly. In this situation, publishers are segmenting their customers. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Joel's Camels and Rubber Duckies: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- joshuacc 16y agoSo they have more money available to spend and have already demonstrated that they are willing to pay a premium for the convenience of ebooks. Once you've met the minimum price at which the producer can make a profit, producer costs don't have much direct influence on market pricing.