Can anyone tell me why the e-books you download to the Kindle or Sony reader cost as much as the actual book?
As far as I know, writers and publishers need to pay, but otherwise not a room full of books, why do we have to pay the standard download the book price? I understand that thousands of pounds in a single device the advantage, but technically, I have intended to buy 300 U.S. dollars in cameras and saved long-term funds. At least there is a real book, can be exchanged at the local bookstore bookworm credit.
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March 9th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
because the publishers and writers are greedy bastards.
everyone in the chain has to get a piece of the pie
write, publisher, reader manufacutrer etc, etc
they are all greedy bastards just like the musicians
March 9th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Because they’re greedy. If you go to sites like Lulu.com and see self-published download prices, they’re much lower. $15 for the book, $5-ish for the download.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
As the technology gets more common and popular, this will probably change. It’s partly supply and demand—not enough people want to buy books in the e-format, so those who do have to pay more for them to cover the expense of providing them to the public.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
My ebook, available in Kindle version from Amazon.com, is only $5.50. The other ebooks I’ve seen are around the same price, while the paper versions are usually $14-$17. Ebooks are considerably cheaper, as far as my experience tells me.
March 9th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
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http://www.truly-free.org/
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The Classic Immortals – Classic Authors
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March 9th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
As far as I know, Amazon does quite a good job on price of books and Kindle books are cheaper than actual books. Sony, however, cannot provide content cheaper than actual books as they are not book vendor itself, and this is also the most complained by owners of the Sony Reader.
You can check the price of best sellers of Kindle books on Amazon, most of them are cheaper than the actual books:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26rs%3D154606011%26sort%3D-edition-sales-velocity%26ref%255F%3Dsr%255Fst%26bbn%3D154606011%26qid%3D1238148855%26rh%3Dn%253A133140011%252Cn%253A%2521133141011%252Cn%253A154606011%26page%3D1&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957
And for books in public domain, Amazon provide them for free to download, which is impossible for actual books:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26node%3D154606011%26p%255F36%3D0-0&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957
There are also more than 20,000 Kindle books which are lower than $1:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26node%3D133141011%26field-price%3D1-99&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957
Yes, real book can be traded while ebooks cannot, this is the drawback. But I’m the kind of person who seldom sell the books I owned, I want to keep them for reference anytime. So the Kindle does save me quite a lot of money in long term.
Hope it helps.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
I don’t know much about the sony reader. But as a Kindle 2 owner myself, I have to say that it has saved me quite a lot of money in buying books. I’m an avid reader and right now I have about 20 Kindle books on the device. They are all cheaper than the actual books. I can foresee that I can even earn the cost of the Kindle device back after a year or so.
There is quite a good article talking about the price of the Kindle here:
http://www.speedreaderxreview.com/is-kindle-2-worth-the-price
Hope that helps.