I’ve had thoughts floating around in my head for a while about ebook pricing, and Oprah’s recent endorsement of the Kindle served to bring them back out into the light again. In the article, she is quoted as saying about the Kindle platform “The books are much cheaper.” The article then goes on to mention that NY Time Bestsellers and new releases are “$9.99 or less, unless otherwise marked.”
I don’t know about most of the rest of the reading world, but I do most of my reading on paperbacks. I pick up hardcovers of books I particularly like, or more rarely of new books by authors I know I like. If I buy a hardcover by an author I don’t know, it’s because it’s either on the discount rack or because I’ve heard amazing things from a reliable source, or both (as was the case when I picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which did not disappoint in the least). The bulk of my reading, though is done in paperback. Read on for more of my thoughts. . . .
Assuming that I’m not alone in this, I think it’s pretty fair to say that ebooks, as they stand now, are overpriced. Sure, they’re about half the price of a hardcover, but most people (extrapolating from my personal sample size of me) buy paperbacks, especially when they’re picking up something convenient to read on the sommute to work. $9.99 is, last I checked, a couple of dollars more than a standard priced paperback.
So, are people going to be willing to pay more for an ebook on the Kindle? Sure, some are, but not the great majority of people. People who really like their tech toys will get one (Indeed, the only reason I haven’t is because I don’t want to support Amazon, as I think they’re doing unpleasant things to the book publishing industry, and I haven’t bought anything Sony since the whole rootkit fiasco in 2005, so the Reader is out too), and people who see it as a bit of a status symbol will as well. I’m sure more people will, now that Oprah has heaped praise upon it, but the Kindle is not the Ipod for books.
The digital music surge had two things going for it: one, mp3s were effectively free in the heyday of Napster and then Grokster, so there was no shortage of stuff to listen to; two, it is ridiculously easy to turn a CD into mp3 files to store on your mp3 player. The first is not so much the case with books, and the second is definitely not. If Kindles or Sony Readers came with some sort of scanning device out of a science fiction novel that would scan a given book quickly and painlessly into digital format, I’m willing to bet there would be a much broader interest in ebooks. As that’s not likely to be developed, and it’s hard to beat the p2p network’s price of “free,” the rise of ebooks doesn’t look like it’s got much momentum behind it.
So what are the options for making ebooks more popular? Well, lower price is one. I’d say half the price of a paperback would be a good place to start. This would probably mean publishers would lose some money at the beginning, but it would be an investment in future profitability. Accessibility is the other, and it’s the edge that publishers could have over file-sharers. We all know (through word-of-mouth of course, never by direct experience) how frustrating it can be to scour sites for that one particular song or album that we’re looking for. It will be the same with ebooks, unless there is an ebook alternative to iTunes.
Clearly, both Amazon and Sony have recognized this, and have their respective stores in place to try to become that market. The problem, though, is that these stores are proprietary. You read your Kindle books on a Kindle, and your Reader books on a Reader, and that’s that. What we need is a massive clearing house for ebooks that charges prices that people will think are honestly reasonable (note here that it’s the perception of value that’s important, not the actual value; even if you’re selling an ebook at cost, if people think it’s too expensive, they’ll just find it online for free, assuming it’s not to difficult to do so), and that is very easy to use and accessible.
I have plenty of musings on where I think the ebook market will go, but this post is already stretching on longer than I had intended, so that will have to wait for next time. Until then, good reading.
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I’m enjoying reading your website…I’ve been meaning to check it out since you mentioned it on your FB.
A lot of people in the industry…at least the small publishers I publish with…are really confident that this market will just grow and grow. My last (pitiful!) royalty statement showed that I sold over twice as many eBooks as I did paperbacks, and my book came out in both formats at the same time. I don’t know if it’s because I’m new, and the 6 dollar price tag is much, much nicer than the 16 dollar price tag of the trade paper back, or if it’s because of the market that Zumaya generally gets.
Anyway, just commenting mostly to say I’ll be – unless you tell me object – linking to this blog. It’s really interesting!
Sure, link away! Glad you’re enjoying the site, too. I’m curious about your ebook sales–what format are you selling the books in, and through what sort of distributor?
Why would they “scan books”? They are not hand written, so the soft copy exists somewhere…
I find the price of ebooks outrageous. With all the cost saved from production , logistics and storage, the price should be way lower. In many instances I have noticed that ebook were sold at the same price as the paperback version.
Any additional ebook sold does not cost anything to the producer.
Also the reader alone cost at least $300 which is a fair bit already. I was considering buying such a reader but I just realised I have to buy hundreds of books before to get a good ROI…
That’s a bit disappointing I found.
I agree with you that ebooks are priced a bit high at the moment; they ought to cost less than a paperback edition, and in many cases they cost more. I’d have to disagree about ebooks being essentially free to publishers, however. It may well be the case that most books published in the last ten or fifteen years are already in electronic format, but not all formats are created equal, and it can take a not insignificant amount of time to convert from Quark to .epub and proof the whole thing to ensure that no errors were introduced in the conversion. Still, materials costs are minimal to nonexistant, as are shipping and warehousing costs.
The price of readers is one good reason why I think mobile devices such as cell phones will become the dominant platform for ebook reading–people don’t want to carry around a half-dozen devices, they want one devices that does a half-dozen things.