I'm curious. Can you name actual books and who sells them where the ebook is $5.00 more than the same paper book ? In my experience, the ebook is the same price or maybe a little cheaper than the paper book. I have never seen an ebook $5.00 more then a paper book.
nbot infrequent.
Take a browse around the Kindle store at amazon for example. in "kindle books" ( do not have access to Apples store right now to do comparison)
from best sellers section
Alex Cross, Run: Paperback 12.27, Kindle 14.99
Jodi Picult, The Storyteller: Hard Cover 16, Kindle 15.99
Will Fergusen, 419: paperback 14.44, Kindle 16.99
Heck. THE HOBBIT, an old book, is 9.99. You can find paperback versions of this book for a couple dollars.
also: LOTR box set (including box for all 3 books). $18.80 in paperback. Kindle price of 29.99 *BUT WAIT, BUY NOW THIS CAN BE HAD FOR A LOW LOW PRICE OF 24.99!
here's the thing that i think is the most troublesom with ebook pricing. is their is a tremendous difference in every price. There's no consistency to it.
there are cheaper ebook prices, there are equivelant and there are more epxnsive ones. I've seen ebook's go for 5-10 less than paper copy, and then I've seen them go for $5 more than hardcover.
In the reality of the market, for what epublishing does, the E-cost associated with distribution of ebooks should be significantly reducing the costs associated with the books. Finding ebooks that are priced equal or more than their paper copies make absolutely no sense from a logistical point of view.
There are no store front costs (employees, rent, overhead of running a brick and mortor store). There's no papermill production costs of producing the paper. no ink costs, no printing costs, no shipping costs (books are very heavy, and require a lot of energy, gas and space to ship), no warehousing costs at distributors or retail centres.
There is NO way, that retailing a book on amazon.ca and having it distribute the product over it's own digital means costs anywhere near the same as those above costs.
So why are the savings not being passed to the customer? if you told me that 90% of those additional margins go directly to the author, I'd be less hesitent, but we all know thats not how media distrubution works. The fact is that these increased margins are being directly put into profit for the distributors like Amazon and Apple and B&N and Hobo.
Don't get me wrong, you can find some amazing deals online for ebooks, if you look, and wait for them to hit. .99c for 1984 is a steal, same with 2.99 for Brave New World (buying now lol).
but the rest of the pricing is so inconsistent with anything that makes any logical sense
