Marion Maneker, writing in the Washington Post, has finally hit the nail on the head. Publishers want more money from ebooks than customers are realistically prepared to pay. The most popular price point for ebooks downloaded from Amazon is … wait for it … $0.00. Yes, free.
Customers aren’t going to be suckered into paying even $9.99 for a piece of popular fiction in ebook form. Why should they? Over here in the UK, supermarkets can sell 3 from the top 10 / 20 / 50 bestsellers for £10. £3.33 each. Now we all know the logistics of supermarkets doing this, and publishers and traditional booksellers can bleat all they like; we, as customers, can buy 3 popular books for £10. And yet we’re asked to pay something like £8 for the ebook versions of these books? Ebooks, with no printing, no paper costs, no transport costs?
The article linked at the start of this post is interesting, and should be read by anyone interested in ebooks and their future.
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