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What's funny is that many online only e-books are sold for much higher prices. I'm talking about the ones with those long infomercial-style sales letters that

What's funny is that many online only e-books are sold for much higher prices. I'm talking about the ones with those long infomercial-style sales letters that target niche audiences and promise to solve all their problems. $40 for a .pdf with large font and only 90 pages of content is not unusual at all. Neither is stuff in the $70 range. The high price is due to the supposed "value" of the information. I've actually always thought those e-books were totally overpriced, but I guess a lot of people had no problem buying them. It's weird though how the set point for price is expected to be much lower for more traditional books that have been ported over, even though in many, many cases the real life books offer tons more value than a cheaply thrown together e-guide to parrots or dating or something.

pchristensen 17y ago
The physical books ported over have the lower price because they're comparable to the physical book. People have expectations about what physical books cost, but people buying the parrot e-books are looking for specific information that's not available in a bookstore. At that point they're buying specific knowledge, not a commoditized product. For instance, if I want to enter the import/export business, am I better off paying $99 to International Living or spending hours scrounging the internet, trying to sift what's real from what's fake, what's trustworthy from the scams, etc? If you value your time, informational e-books can be a lifesaver, even if their delivery medium (poorly formatted pdf files) is cheap.