Will the day come when it is the norm to pay more for an e-book than for its physical copy?
I sure as hell hope not. A a physical copy—from here on referred to as a book—an be touched, felt, smelled, owned and resold. An e-book is an abstract form of a book. You can’t touch it, feel it, smell it and much less sell it after you’re done with it.
Why buy an e-book and not a book?
1. Books take space. If you’re like me, you love to read like crazy and like to keep the copy. If you keep buying books and keeping them there will come a time where every inch of your walls are covered in bookcases. Pretty soon you’ll be eating on a table made of a pile of books. Whereas you can have hundreds of e-books stored in one small space. For example:
a. Your laptop.
b. iPad
c. Kindle: the smallest one can store about 3,500 e-books.
There are many e-readers and you should pick one that best meets your needs. I have an iPad but most of the e-books I buy are from the Kindle App which I have on my iPad, my laptop, my other laptop and my Android phone. Everywhere I go I have my books with me.
2. Books are heavy. Even if the book is a Mass Market Paperback edition it will still weigh a lot more than its e-book twin.
3. E-books are cheaper than books. Usually. Hardcovers are about $20. An e-book averages between $9.99 and $12.99 when it launches. However, I do note that that isn’t always the case. I for one, I’m not willing to pay more for an e-book than its hardcover twin. I’m willing to pay the same for its MMP edition though. And I never pay more than $9.99 for an e-book regardless of the price of its book twin.
How much are you willing to pay for an e-book?
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8 comments:
Actually, I think the price of e-books will go down. There are no printing, transport or store space costs with an e-book, once you pay off the costs of the servers it's pure profits (apart from the author's royalties, which are peanuts). They're only getting away with that price because people are used to paying that for real books, fairly soon I'd say they'll take it down a lot, and the costs of real books will probably go up to compensate for the losses decreased sales cost them. So I doubt you'll ever face that choice :-)
I compare e-books to designer clothing. It doesn't take much to make a shirt but people still pay a lot of money, some even extreme quantities of money. They're not paying for the material, they're paying for the idea. It's the same with e-books, printing isn't the hardest part of book publishing. It's writing the actual book that is so hard and so costly. You're paying the writer and publishing house for all the hard work. It takes years to write a ready-for-distribution book. Hundreds of hours of creation.
Actually, royalties cost the publisher very little. They're barely noticeable, certainly not a decent dent. They still have to pay editors, but they'd be paid off fairly quickly with a successful book. I know it takes hundreds of hours, and SHOULD be paying the author, but you aren't :-)
Even if costs don't go down, they won't get away with raising them. And they can afford to take them down, since they've cut out a large part of the costs, which means competition could drive them down. But either way, they won't go up much :-)
I agree with Ruth that prices won't go up. But here's what I wrote before I saw her comments:
I just got a kindle for christmas and I love it. Yes, the look and feel of the physical book are missed, but that just can't compare with the fact that a kindle is so compact -- you can take *all* of your books *anywhere*. This is super important when I think about the fact that in 2012 I'll be heading off to college, and, most likely, a small college dorm. There simply isn't space for the 3+ bookshelves full of books that I've collected over the years. Now I can leave them home and when I decide I miss a book enough to want it, I can purchase it again on the kindle.
I don't know that I would pay more for the ebook than the actual book -- this doesn't really make sense, as I would assume the higher price of print books is due to production costs. With ebooks there are little to no production costs, so unless the book was interactive in some way that isn't possible in a print book, I don't think I'd waste my money on it. One of the great things about ebooks is that they're so much cheaper. A more expensive ebook kind of defeats the purpose.
Also, one cannot deny that ebooks do wonders for the trees of the world. =)
You're also paying the editors who also spent hours working on the MS and the publicist and the publicity tools among many others.
I do agree with you when you say "they won't get away with raising them." And I do believe a physical copy is worth more than a virtual or digital one.
Most of the e-books I buy are $7.99 but no more than $9.99.
Oh, I almost forgot:
writingmistakes.blogspot.com
That'd be me, if you want to check it out! =)
The great thing about Kindle is that you aren't restricted to your Kindle device. You can download the Mac, WIndows or phone (android, windows or apple) app and have your books everywhere and have it sync your books to the farthest read location. It also holds your highlights and your notes.
I am tactile. I love books. I love the weight of them in my hand. I love the way they smell of paper. I love the sound of pages being turned. I just love them.
E-books seem so impersonal to me. I think I'd be fine buying textbooks as e-books (if I could highlight/make notes in the margins), but there are some authors I love so much that I just know I will always want a "real" book.
On a different note: after carefully considering your comment, I've decided to extend my age range from 13-19 for my Teen Speak blog series. Feel free to check it out www.jenniferwelbornwrites.com :)
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