4 ms·

What I find funny is that this would have never happened if they charged the standard $9.99 e-book price (which in itself is absolutely too much for e-books).

What I find funny is that this would have never happened if they charged the standard $9.99 e-book price (which in itself is absolutely too much for e-books). The $5 difference is causing quite a stir which I am sure is not worth it in the long run.

ig1 16y ago
Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it. Valuing a book by it's physical properties is a practice that's gone on for far too long. Lots of technical books are full of "padding" and duplication because no-one will buy a 50 page book which concisely provides the useful information for $10-$20. It waste a huge amount of time both of the author and the readers.
- ori_b 16y ago
  I would gladly pay more for a thinner, more concise book.
  - ig1 16y ago
    Me too. But sadly the market at the moment doesn't seem to support it.
  - awj 16y ago
    I have come to use the term "frighteningly thing" to describe most of the math and comp sci textbooks I decided were worth keeping. They are tiny, polished, beautiful gems rather than a ton and a half of rock studded with some promising crystals.
    - ori_b 16y ago
      Any especially good ones you care to mention?
      - awj 16y ago
        What I have in the room with me: 1. Modern Algebra by John R. Durbin 2. Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser 3. Machine Learning - An Algorithmic Perspective by Stephen Marsland (not quite on the same level as the above two, but still pretty solid) I think Tanenbaum's Operating System and Appel's Compilers books both go in this category too, they're big but not compared to their subject matter. But, I've seen enough people disappointed in both to think this is more my personal opinion at play.
- Tichy 16y ago
  "Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it." I think if we are talking about entertainment books (novels and such), there simply is too much competition. At the end of the day, a lot of those entertainment books could be exchanged for another entertainment book. I suppose for similar reasons cinema tickets tend to not vary too much with the content of the movie?
  - ig1 16y ago
    Cinema tickets are fixed due to price fixing by the big movie studios. Studios don't want some movies to be priced lower than other movies as that would send the signal that the cheaper movies are worse than the more expensive movies. A few years ago Stelios of EasyJet fame tried to start a cinema chain which offered dynamic pricing, Warner Bros, Disney, and 20th Century Fox all refused to licence any of their movies to him which more or less killed his business.
  - runevault 16y ago
    Yes and no on replaceability. On one hand you could argue within a range one book is as good as another. However for many people, once they come to enjoy an authors work, that particular author is "not replaceable" because you want his unique writing voice/take on things/etc. Until you find those authors you adore to that degree, however, yes books are totally interchangeable after a certain quality threshold is passed.
- falcolas 16y ago
  To me, $10 for an ebook is too much because of the significant restrictions that come with it. For your average ebook, you can't resell it, you can't lend it, it can arbitrarily be taken from you; you don't "own" the book. $10 for a license to read a book seems far too high. On the flip side, the convenience of ebooks helps to defray some of these obvious cons.
- timwiseman 16y ago
  One reason lots of technical books have duplication is because the author knows that a lot of people do not read them cover to cover. Instead they pick and choose the sections that seem relevant/interesting to them and having a recap of some of the key background material needed by that section right there is very useful.
- joshfinnie 16y ago
  I guess what I meant to say is that $10 is too much for an ebook which is selling significantly cheaper in paperback or slightly more in hardcover. My favorite example of this is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: it is $18.99 to buy it for a nook, but $9.99 for the paperback (and as low as $1 used, but that's beyond the argument).
- awj 16y ago
  > surely it depends on the value of the content inside it. It doesn't when an ebook is priced higher than paper editions with the same content. I do agree on the padding, though.
tptacek 16y ago
If $9.99 is too much for an ebook, then publishers will not survive selling ebooks at $9.99. If the market clears at $9.99, then $9.99 is by definition not too much for an ebook. If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets. † For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011.
- jswinghammer 16y ago
  Too much is of course a subjective term. The problem with ebooks is that once the book is written they lack scarcity which makes them fairly different from most consumer products. A market clearing price is sort of weird in this instance since we know that the supply can expand to meet infinite consumer demand. If the parent poster is correct then we'll see a price correction towards a lower price. We'll also see a more active black market appear as has happened in the world of music if the price doesn't drop. The 9.99 price is likely low enough to discourage most market participants from piracy but if it goes much higher then who knows. To suggest that the state of the market as we see it now is the optimal one isn't correct since the free market should always be fluctuating as things change in the world. That said if the price was really too high then no one would buy ebooks and everyone would have fixed that by now or decided to abandon the idea for the time being.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    There is no natural law of scarcity which suppliers are required to honor. They can produce as much or as little of a good as they want. The producer controls scarcity of their offering. The market responds by identifying substitutes, not by coercing the producer into relaxing scarcity. If your logic held, every paper book would cost the same amount; _The Very Hungry Caterpiller_ would cost within pennies of the same amount as Volume 1 of _The Art Of Computer Programming_. After all, you're not paying for the paper. Judging from the amount of junk mail in my mailbox every morning, paper is pretty cheap. Clearly it is also the case that _The Art Of Computer Programming_ as an ebook has exactly the same scarcity as _Twilight: New Moon_'s ebook; according to your logic, they must also cost the same.

ig1 16y ago

Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it. Valuing a book by it's physical properties is a practice that's gone on for far too long. Lots of technical books are full of "padding" and duplication because no-one will buy a 50 page book which concisely provides the useful information for $10-$20. It waste a huge amount of time both of the author and the readers.

ori_b 16y ago
I would gladly pay more for a thinner, more concise book.
- ig1 16y ago
  Me too. But sadly the market at the moment doesn't seem to support it.
- awj 16y ago
  I have come to use the term "frighteningly thing" to describe most of the math and comp sci textbooks I decided were worth keeping. They are tiny, polished, beautiful gems rather than a ton and a half of rock studded with some promising crystals.
  - ori_b 16y ago
    Any especially good ones you care to mention?
    - awj 16y ago
      What I have in the room with me: 1. Modern Algebra by John R. Durbin 2. Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser 3. Machine Learning - An Algorithmic Perspective by Stephen Marsland (not quite on the same level as the above two, but still pretty solid) I think Tanenbaum's Operating System and Appel's Compilers books both go in this category too, they're big but not compared to their subject matter. But, I've seen enough people disappointed in both to think this is more my personal opinion at play.
Tichy 16y ago
"Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it." I think if we are talking about entertainment books (novels and such), there simply is too much competition. At the end of the day, a lot of those entertainment books could be exchanged for another entertainment book. I suppose for similar reasons cinema tickets tend to not vary too much with the content of the movie?
- ig1 16y ago
  Cinema tickets are fixed due to price fixing by the big movie studios. Studios don't want some movies to be priced lower than other movies as that would send the signal that the cheaper movies are worse than the more expensive movies. A few years ago Stelios of EasyJet fame tried to start a cinema chain which offered dynamic pricing, Warner Bros, Disney, and 20th Century Fox all refused to licence any of their movies to him which more or less killed his business.
- runevault 16y ago
  Yes and no on replaceability. On one hand you could argue within a range one book is as good as another. However for many people, once they come to enjoy an authors work, that particular author is "not replaceable" because you want his unique writing voice/take on things/etc. Until you find those authors you adore to that degree, however, yes books are totally interchangeable after a certain quality threshold is passed.
falcolas 16y ago
To me, $10 for an ebook is too much because of the significant restrictions that come with it. For your average ebook, you can't resell it, you can't lend it, it can arbitrarily be taken from you; you don't "own" the book. $10 for a license to read a book seems far too high. On the flip side, the convenience of ebooks helps to defray some of these obvious cons.
timwiseman 16y ago
One reason lots of technical books have duplication is because the author knows that a lot of people do not read them cover to cover. Instead they pick and choose the sections that seem relevant/interesting to them and having a recap of some of the key background material needed by that section right there is very useful.
joshfinnie 16y ago
I guess what I meant to say is that $10 is too much for an ebook which is selling significantly cheaper in paperback or slightly more in hardcover. My favorite example of this is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: it is $18.99 to buy it for a nook, but $9.99 for the paperback (and as low as $1 used, but that's beyond the argument).
awj 16y ago
> surely it depends on the value of the content inside it. It doesn't when an ebook is priced higher than paper editions with the same content. I do agree on the padding, though.

tptacek 16y ago

If $9.99 is too much for an ebook, then publishers will not survive selling ebooks at $9.99. If the market clears at $9.99, then $9.99 is by definition not too much for an ebook. If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets. † For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011.

jswinghammer 16y ago
Too much is of course a subjective term. The problem with ebooks is that once the book is written they lack scarcity which makes them fairly different from most consumer products. A market clearing price is sort of weird in this instance since we know that the supply can expand to meet infinite consumer demand. If the parent poster is correct then we'll see a price correction towards a lower price. We'll also see a more active black market appear as has happened in the world of music if the price doesn't drop. The 9.99 price is likely low enough to discourage most market participants from piracy but if it goes much higher then who knows. To suggest that the state of the market as we see it now is the optimal one isn't correct since the free market should always be fluctuating as things change in the world. That said if the price was really too high then no one would buy ebooks and everyone would have fixed that by now or decided to abandon the idea for the time being.
- tptacek 16y ago
  There is no natural law of scarcity which suppliers are required to honor. They can produce as much or as little of a good as they want. The producer controls scarcity of their offering. The market responds by identifying substitutes, not by coercing the producer into relaxing scarcity. If your logic held, every paper book would cost the same amount; _The Very Hungry Caterpiller_ would cost within pennies of the same amount as Volume 1 of _The Art Of Computer Programming_. After all, you're not paying for the paper. Judging from the amount of junk mail in my mailbox every morning, paper is pretty cheap. Clearly it is also the case that _The Art Of Computer Programming_ as an ebook has exactly the same scarcity as _Twilight: New Moon_'s ebook; according to your logic, they must also cost the same.