Might We Be Paying Over The Odds For E-Books
Over the last two years or so, the popularity of e-books has grown enormously. A lot of the credit for that must go to the Amazon Kindle reader which, whilst not the first e-book reader to hit the market, has undeniably been a major influence in the growth of the market for both e-book readers and the e-books that accompany them.
E-book sales for 2011 are forecast to make up between 12 and 15% of total book sales. The market is still in an early stage, but e-books are becoming more and more important in the world of publishing. If anything, their importance may actually be a little higher than the straight percentage might suggest. At the risk of stating the obvious, it seems likely that e-book reader owners will be likely to buy, and read, a lot of books. They are, in other words, the target demographic for the major publishing firms.
So, it would make sense for publishers to set the prices of e-books at the right level. They otherwise run the risk of disenchanting their best customers. So, what would a fair price for an e-book be?
E-books use no ink, paper or bindings. Also, since they are not a physical product, there are no fees associated with delivery. Therefore, they should be quite a bit cheaper than traditional print books – right?
Or maybe not. The cost of paper, ink, bindings and transportation is, according to publishers, only a small part of bringing a book to market. There are editing costs, proof reading costs, marketing costs etc. The lack of a few reams of paper is, all things considered, pretty much insignificant – according to many publishers.
Up to a point, you can see some logic in this argument. But you may also ask why, if the physical aspects don’t influence the price too greatly, there is such a difference between the prices of hardback and paperback books. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Amazon had a policy of pricing e-books at $9.99 or less until recently. Until they had a disagreement with some of the major publishing houses that is. At one point one publisher’s books (briefly) disappeared from the Amazon website.
Many publishers have now adopted the agency pricing model. Which just means that it’s the publisher who decides on the selling price instead of the retailer. You may, whilst searching Amazon for something to read on your Kindle 3, come across the notice “this price was set by the publisher” – which is simply Amazon’s way of flagging up the fact that they did not fix the price for that particular book.
To be fair, a number of business analysts did not see Amazon’s $9.99 price policy as being viable in the long term.
When you’re finished with an e-book, you can’t pass it on to friends or family (although Kindle owners can now lend Kindle books to other Kindle owners for a two week period). Neither can you sell it to a second hand book store, donate it to a local library or a charity shop. In summary, you have fewer options than you would have with a standard, print edition. Lower functionality should lead to a lower price surely?
Currently, an e-book costs exactly what the publisher says it should. If you don’t agree with them, you always have the option of not buying the book of course. You could simply wait a month or two and e-book prices may, as is the case with video games, fall quite a bit just a few weeks after the initial launch.
You could even decide to spend your hard earned dollars on something entirely different – a DVD, a video game, tickets to a concert. Instead of reading a book you might just watch TV. Books are, for the most part, a discretionary purchase and need to compete with a number of other products and services for both your leisure time and your money. As with any other discretionary purchase, an e-book should be pitched at the price that you are willing to pay for it. It’s up to you to decide what it’s worth.
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