eBooks
I just finished reading Bloodsucking Fiends, a fun vampire novel by Christopher Moore. I took it out from the library, but being the impatient type just checked on Amazon to see what the next book in the series would cost on Kindle. I don’t have a Kindle, but there’s an Android Kindle app, and I don’t mind reading books on my phone (although I do prefer hard copies).
A physical copy of You Suck costs $10.07 on Amazon. The Kindle version costs $9.99.
I realize that the promotion, layout and typesetting, and author fees make up more of the cost of a book than the physical, printed book. But I’m sorry – I refuse to believe the physical book costs eight fucking cents.
iTunes is a brilliant example of digital distribution done well: It’s easier than searching for files on torrent sites, it’s cheaper than buying the physical album, and the per-song and per-album costs aren’t insulting to the buyer.
At $6.99 I’d consider buying the Kindle version of You Suck. At $4.99 it becomes less expensive than the used copies, and leaps into the realm of “impulse buy.” At $2.99 or less, I’d be buying eBooks left and right, even if they only garnered mediocre reviews. It’d be worth it to take the risk, and I’d probably stop going to the library entirely.
At $9.99, a whopping $0.08 less than the hard copy, I feel sort of embarrassed for Amazon. It’s like I was flirting with a few different girls. One represents buying the book, one represents going to the library, one represents pirating the book, and one represents buying a Kindle edition.
Buying the book is super hot, great in bed, but requires expensive gifts.
Taking the book out from the library is pretty good looking, solid in bed, but unwilling to make long-term commitments.
Pirating the book makes me feel a little dirty, but suppressing my guilt is often worth the solid make-out sessions.
And, in the corner, sits Amazon’s Kindle. She seems really hot, almost as good as buying the book outright, until you approach. She gets up to say “Hi”, trips over herself, spills punch all over her dress, drops the glass and breaks it, and in the silence when everyone turns to look at her, someone else whispers, “Yeah, I hear she’s also got a bad case of crabs.”
It’s just embarrassing to watch.
literature, toys
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android, books, toys
Themocracy
You should check out some of Moore’s other books.
Dude is LOL funny
One more thing
Wouldn’t having an APP for any of the e-readers on a smart phone defeat the purpose of owning a e-reader
You can download the e-reader Kindle app on desktop PCs, iPhones, Android phones, etc, and then you can buy one copy of the ebook and have it appear on all your devices. Which is, I must admit, a little nifty. But not $9.99 nifty.
My mom has a Kindle + the kindle iphone app so I understand the utility of both – the kindle is much easier to read off of than the small, backlit iphone screen, but the iphone app allows you to read for a few minutes if you have some unexpected downtime without taking the kindle with you everywhere (just like you wouldn’t, or at least I wouldn’t, want to carry the physical book I’m reading with me everywhere but like something to do if I have a few minutes of sitting and waiting)
I’m all for the technology – I love the idea of being able to transport a ton of books in my pocket or purse – they’re just so unreasonably expensive.
A-freakin’-men!
I bought a Nook about a month ago and have yet to buy any actual contemporary fiction for it because of this. If I’m going to pay $10, I might as well buy an actual hard copy. Considering there are no printing costs, shipping costs, and little production costs involved in creating an eBook, $9.99 is a total ripoff. It’s insulting.
Hia Melissa! I couldn’t agree more. I should note that it isn’t always the store’s fault. In this case, i was a little hard on Amazon: the page for You Suck notes that the price was set by the publisher. But still, that’s $9.99 for digital versus $13.99 for the print MSRP. To me, particularly when Amazon rarely (if ever) sells at the MSRP, that seems ridiculous.
There’s a couple of text books I’d like to get on Kindle, but they’re still prohibitively expensive. $63 digital vs. $70+ for a hard copy.
I *might* still go for it, since text books weigh a lot and take up quite a lot of space but… $63 vs $70+? Ouch.
My problem is I’m thinking about moving soon so I’m faced with a dilemma. Move the physical books and incur shipping costs? Or replace the books with digital copies and wind up having to pay for the same titles twice.
I think digital book distributors either need to do something pretty dramatic to convince me printing costs are lower than I think they are, or (ideally) lower the prices of their friggin’ digital copies! (Or try a third approach, where buying the print edition lets you buy the digital version for an additional 10% or something.)
Amazon is not actually in complete control over the price of a kindle book. They recently got into a fight with several publishers who refused to allow the kindle version of their books to be sold for a lower price. So while it may seem that it is simply a question of the cost of the printed page, there is far more at work. Publishers are fighting tooth and nail to control the price of their books as they keep losing money. It is just as obvious to Amazon to sell it for cheaper, but the publisher, author, layout designer, agent, and so on, still have to get their cut. The market isn’t as free as it would seem.
Thanks for the comment, APT, and you’re right: it’s important to remember the blame can’t be laid wholly at Amazon’s feet.
Rebecca, I completely agree. Although, I have to say, I am beginning to get into the eBook phase. My friend recently got me a gift certificate from booksonboard.com, and although the reason may be that they’re free to me, I have actually been getting more and more into it, so I wouldn’t mind purchasing it for the prices that are posted for eBooks. Granted, I would be going back to the BooksOnBoard website since the prices I’ve seen are great, and I know that I would be getting rewards back in order to make my next purchase which seals the deal for me. I would not go to Amazon AT ALL to make eBook purchases.
Thanks for the suggestion. Although, from looking at their books under $5, it still seems like the less expensive stuff isn’t very good and the best sellers still aren’t that inexpensive.