Poll: How cheap should ebooks be?

Astounded EEG,
You went way over the top for me. To heavy. need a beer. But I'm at work. Shame on you for forcing me to read such along diatribe.
Sigh even work is better.....well not better but as good as....well not really but oh the heck with it. I like E-books. But I am nto going to pay more than $5 for one.
:rolling:

[ceej13]

Originally posted by wmrawls
... I like E-books. But I am nto going to pay more than $5 for one.
:rolling:

Depending what the book is, I agree. If you figure twenty-some odd dollars for a hard bound and it's paperback is around $7 now-a-days, I'd probably pay $5 or $6 for the e-book.

for god's sake...such controversy over the price of an ebook....I'm going out with wmrawls for a beer :)

Honestly, I'm not paying for an eBook that costs more than 6 bones, no matter what it is. I have found very few books in recent years I'd want to spend good cash on a hardcover of, otherwise, I'll try to get after it at my local used book store. or Amazon.com or something.

Paying more than that for something that can be e-mailed to me just seems wrong. Maybe I'm wack, but hey.....I'm just being real.

Originally posted by wmrawls
Astounded EEG,
You went way over the top for me. To heavy. need a beer.

mmm beer sounds good.

If the book is by one of my favortie authors I would be willing to pay for it hard back but if it is juat someone that I kind of like to read I would pay $5 or so. But the deal at ww.baen.com is that you can download a lot of SF free and work out a Webscripton and buy others for a fixed rate that I have nto investigated but I thinkit is $14 a month and you can download 3 or 4 books a month. Some kind of installments on some new books where a fixed number of chapters are released monthly of new titles. But to the point, I do usually have one even if it takes me while to get there, I have several books that are in both formats (hard and E). Because I like the author and may read a book several times and like to travel with a SD full it works out ok for me.
I'm surprised that Raynee is not in this discussion she usually weighs in with a small opione when it comes to e-books.
Oh well we all have to do other things besides hang around this site. But it does make the day go by faster.:crooked:

maybe she's busy reading her ebooks!!

[ceej13]

She'll be around.

maybe she's busy reading her ebooks!!

She probably is.

Originally posted by janine248
for god's sake...such controversy over the price of an ebook....I'm going out with wmrawls for a beer :)

First round is on me.Start a tab. Killens Red on tap.

[ceej13]

MMMMmmmm. Beer! *Come sing with me.....*
-Dough… with which…I buy my beer
-Ray… the guy I buy beer from
-Me… the one… I buy beer for
-Fa… the distance to the store
-So…I think I’ll drink my beer
-La… lots and lots of beer
-Ti… No thanks… I’ll have my beer!
-That will bring us back to Dough!

[RacerX2oo3]

I don't think that traditional brick and mortar economic's really work for a subject like e-books.

The idea that because few people own PPC devices and therefore the pool of available purchasers is small equates to higher prices for product does not hold up when compared to other existing PPC markets.

Because of the small footprint for installed software, the vast majority of PPC software is distributed through online retailers and available by download. Much the same as e-books. Yet, most software available for PPC costs under $30, far below this price in most cases. Similar software products for the PC cost several times as much.

The smaller user base of PPC's versus desktop systems does not raise the price of PPC software.

And yet the same tradeoffs also exist, PPC software is less powerful and less feature rich than desktop software. However PPC software has the "go anywhere", "always available", features that can't be matched in desktop systems.

I guess part of the equation here has to be "why do people buy books?"

Hard Cover - First availability; pride of ownership. A hardcover is something that will last. Your grandchildren might read the same Hardy Boys hardcover books that your dad handed down to you as a boy.

Paperback - Price; flexibilty. A paperback is not expected to last. You often take it places and abuse it in ways that you would'nt with a hardcover book. When finished you may keep it, or pass it along or resell it.

Magazine - Price; entertainment value; timeliness. Almost certain to be disposed of. Extremely limited duribility.

E-books - Portability; first availability. In no other way does an e-book truely supass any of the traditional print media. It's durability is questionable, it is limited to one or two devices, you cannot transfer ownership. It is unlikely your grandchildren will be reading any of the files you download today. In many ways e-books are much like magazines. They fulfill an itch to read a particular piece of work, and are expected to be disposable.

THE FIRST E-BOOKS:

In the early 1990's a multi volume set of the Encyclopedia Brittainica sold for between $1500 - $2000 a set depending on the binding quality. $500 - $600 of this price went solely to pay the sales commission on the product.

Today there are virtually no bound enclyclopedia's sold, Microsoft Encarta is available for around $50 and is given away free with most new computers.

The Encyclopedia Brittainica web service is available for unlimited use for $60 a year.

Some info reported from: www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=807

Originally posted by RacerX2oo3
I don't think that traditional brick and mortar economic's really work for a subject like e-books.

sure they do, you just have to figure out what makes the particular market tick, which I by no means did. good point about software. the thing about software though is that various programs are often substitutes for one another. If I want some kind of menu bar application, I can shell out $10 for a super fancy one or just download a decent one for free.

books, on the other hand, cannot be substituted for one another, not quite anyway. If I want to read stephen king it doesn't really help me that edgar allen poe is free.

i think the fact that there is already a pricing system for ebooks is a huge part of it too.

anyway I wasn't really arguing with you in my huge-axx posts, just fleshing out some of the details of the situation and brandishing knowledge from my econ classes to make it seem useful and worthwhile.

let's grab some beer before all these punks clean out the bar...

[RacerX2oo3]

Mmmmm beer.....

Truth be told, you're probably right on most of your points. It's just that the pricing model for e-books just so rubs me the wrong way.