Ebook pricing insanity
By Paul Biba
I can’t say it any better than David Lomax did in this email to me. I don’t think anyone is trying to price gouge, however. I think its just that this whole ebook pricing thing is so new that nobody has a clue as to what to do. Unfortunately the incompetence of publishers and resellers is driving away the very readers they are trying to retain. Here’s David’s email:
You guys at Teleread are really good at reporting on the price issue with regards to ebooks, so I thought this one might interest you. Sony has just made available The Year’s Best SF 14, exactly the same day that it was released in mass market paperback. Same with the Kindle edition. The pricing, however, is ridiculous. The digital list price is supposedly $14.99. Sony’s willing to give us an oh-so-generous discount of 10% to get it down to $13.49, while the Kindle edition gets, as usual, a steeper drop to $9.99. But here’s the kicker: the mass market paperback goes for $7.99.
This makes no sense. Previous editions in this series are available on those same two platforms, and their prices are in line with the physical books. So, what’s up? It seems like some pretty horrible price-gouging. I’ve been buying that anthology for years, but I’m done with it until the pricing becomes fair.
May 26th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Tell the market your demands aren’t being met; Pirate it!
May 26th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
@caleb: I won’t steal something just because I think the price is unfair. I don’t think my grocery store’s price on whole-wheat is all that great, but I’m not about to shop-lift. I’ll just buy the books that are fairly priced and hope that others do the same and that publishers get the message.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
Why on earth would the ebook edition of this book be priced so much higher than the print edition? I think the answer lies in a fundamental disconnect between these large publishing houses and the consumers they are trying to attract. Also, there’s a deep misunderstanding within these publishing houses about where ebooks fit into the larger picture of publishing and literature.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
The only way I can see it making sense (and the pricing of SF 14 is by no means unique) is if the publisher regards the ebook as a threat to the profitability of the print edition and is pricing the ebook to push consumers toward the print edition. With the print edition, the publisher may believe itself to be on familiar ground, while not being sure about this ebook thing at all. So…
Bests,
–tr
May 26th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Tony,
That would seem to be very unlikely, given every other edition has been the same pricing.
How can they suddenly get ‘unfamiliar’ after doing it for 14 years? That doesn’t make any sense.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Blue,
Doesn’t seem likely, does it? But I’ve seen quite a few ebooks where the pricing on the ebook edition doesn’t drop to the print edition price for weeks or months. Did all those editions of Year’s Best SF have equal pricing the day of release until the new one? I dunno. But the pricing of Year’s Best SF 14 isn’t unique.
As to unfamiliarity — for years, ebook sales have been minute by comparison to print sales, and my guess would be that a number of publishers have regarded the ebook as something that might bring in a few more sales and a few extra dollars, but nothing really significant. The print edition is where it’s at, and where it’s gonna stay. And then overnight comes the Kindle, and the ebook gets more press in a few months than it seems to have had in the last decade. And soon after that the comment (was it Bezos or some other Amazon spokesman within the last month or two?) that the Kindle edition makes up about a third of a title’s sales at Amazon when both print and Kindle editions are available. The ebook isn’t an afterthought any more, and the ground is shakier now.
My guess, anyway.
Bests,
–tr
May 27th, 2009 at 9:16 am
This is just one of many Harper Collins (EOS) titles that have been getting this treatment. They have been putting out all kinds of ebooks at $14.99 that have a $7.99 print counterpart since around the beginning of the year.
Questions about this (from various Mobile Readers) have either been left unanswered or answered with a message that $14.99 is the correct price.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Ok, so they are nuts.
Anyone keen can buy two paperbacks, destroy one, put it into a document feeder scanner, sell the other one, and come out ahead of $14.99 there.
In fact, given an anthology, you can probably source a lot of the other stories pristinely (and some are free online) so OCR/proofreading would be less in this case.
Bet no-one is game to own up to making this policy.
Why would you encourage people to do it themselves, like this?
May 27th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Anyway, I said what I thought about it at Amazon. I would encourage others to do the same on the Year’s Best SF 14, if they feel so inclined.
May 27th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Absolute minimum rating anywhere else it is priced horribly, too, of course.
May 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The whole pricing issue is a travesty. I think the Amazon forum $9,99 boycott and tagging of titles is the way to go. I.e.- we won’t buy an e-book OR THE PHYSICAL BOOK, until the ebook price is less than the print edition. If the publishers wait too long on this, they will go the way of newspapers. Soyanara!
May 28th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Absolutely. If they want to be that insulting, then they don’t get paid for any version.