I probably should retract that previous statement of mine a bit. On further thought content often has very little sway in ‘high volume’ print titles (fiction). The expectation is that most hardcovers retail between $25-$27, independent of author popularity.

At that price point publishers are pocketing their 40% which just so happens to be about $10. Gross profit, of course.

Now if a publisher could scale up ebook sales from their own site then the $9.99 retail price is a great model. With Amazon as retailer and their 65% discount … well, not so.

An argument can be made that a how-to or reference guide could have different pricing thresholds than a novel. I’m not saying whether that’s right or wrong, but as long as Amazon focuses their highest-volume titles around a $9.99 ceiling I do believe the notion that $9.99 is right for *all* genres becomes more widely accepted and assumed.

Btw, we’re busy experimenting with a wide range of prices. If you look on the Apple App Store you’ll see our wildly popular “iPhone: The Missing Manual” is available as an app for $4.99, for example. It’s this sort of experimentation that we need to do today to generate data that we can study to figure out the right models for the future.

But that’s not the point. I think they can and would work very well for non-fiction. Things like maps and illustrations and charts with the ability to watch things change over time would be really helpful. The ability to look over the simulated terrain of a battle from the position of the general would be great if you’re studying military history.

You could probably do similar things for great sweeping fantasies or space operas too – it could work very well. Just keep music and video clips out of my novels.

“Amazon is carefully training us to think of $9.99 as the ‘right price’ for a Kindle book.”

… until saturation.

Wages, rents, utilities all rise over time. Not to mention premium price hikes for in-demand product. Would readers have paid $11.99 for Twilight instead of $9.99? Would they consider $12.99 for the new Dan Brown. How about $14.99 for a Harry Potter Jnr Series?

Joe, you say: “As a consumer, when I see a Kindle price over $9.99 I’m highly likely to skip it.”

Are these impulse buys? Or do you really discount sought after titles based on price alone?

If so, what drives O’Reilly to price ebooks so high?

Not one of the 25 ebooks on your bestseller list retails (on your site) for $9.99. In fact the cheapest lists at $19.99, the dearest at $39.99. Good thing you work there, Joe, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading many ebooks on the job! I’m jesting BTW … well, kinda!

Content is what dictates price. Some arbitrary number that sits comfortably with the masses at a given moment in time is simply an indicator of sorts but it’s ridiculous to demand that a $9.99 price point becomes the standard.

Hell, I’ve paid over $9.99 for an ebook. Thank god I got that off my chest, it felt like a dirty secret I couldn’t admit to!

Of course, if I didn’t want to pay $9.99 for the iPhone: The Missing Manual Ed. 2, let alone $19.99 I could simply look in the ‘Skull and Cross bones’ treasure chest. No point though … since I don’t have an iPhone.

Now, a reference work on ships might contain extensive 3-D plans. A reference work on birds might contain audio recordings of bird calls. A future book on ancient cities might include a SimCity-style simulation. A future book on genetics might include a Spore-like body-plan synthesizer that is more plausible and less fantastical than Will Wright’s.

The 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins (Darwin’s Rottweiler) contained a section based on a simple computer simulation program called Weasel. It would be easy to include an applet of this type with a multimedia ebook. A mathematical recreations book from Martin Gardner might include a glider gun simulation.

So perhaps prices can be raised above $9.99. However, the digital encyclopedia class mentioned above also provides a cautionary tale for merchants. Prices that move up can also be pushed down. The most relied-upon semi-reliable multimedia encyclopedia is Wikipedia. The price to access this egregiously comprehensive ebook is zero dollars and zero cents.

Let’s see how this develops over the next few years. My prediction is e-books will become much richer products and therefore justify the higher pricing levels.

I agree with Chris, too. I love to read; adding multimedia will never “enhance” my reading of words-only versions of Whitman or Goethe or any so-called literary novelist. Reading a book is not the same experience as listening to audio or watching a film. The technology is more primitive, but the value is not less.

Let’s hope that the publishing Universe of the future is large enough to hold both varieties of ebooks, “rich ebooks” (filled with audio and video) and “organic ebooks” — with nothing artificial added.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

I acknowledge there’s still a place for radio today. I listen to mine from time to time in the car but I get a lot more use out of my TV. And although Vin Scully does a great job describing the details of a baseball game on the radio, I prefer to watch it for myself on TV.

You’ll be glad to know that I believe books as we know them today aren’t going away. And there will always be a lot of interest in reading good old text off a piece of paper. But just as the TV helped bring a new platform to entertainment, I think e-books will evolve over time and offer a lot more than just the e-rendering of the print version.

I keep seeing people going on about how e-books should incorporate multimedia and interactivity and stuff. Why? Because it’s there?

It doesn’t make sense. When I want to read a book, I want to read—not be multimediated. That may not be what you’re talking about, but I have a hard time seeing how or why an e-book should be “richer” than the print book it came from. All I want are the words (and pictures, if any).

And I certainly don’t want to pay more for it, given that I’m losing the ability to recoup costs by selling used.