The price differences between different formats from the same bookstore, or from one week to the next at the same bookstore continues to amaze me.

Rachel

But I’ve noticed that when that same hardback comes out in mass paperback, eReader will continue to charge hardback prices for quite some time — a year or longer. No one in their right mind is going to pay $25 for a book they can purchase for $7.99 (or less — $5.97 if they go to WalMart).

Or a $7.99 paperback gets republished and the price suddenly jumps to $14.99 or more.

Mists of Avalon *was* listed at $10, *now* it’s $17.10. I purchased Jim Butcher’s Grave Peril (#3) for $7.99, now eReader wants $15.15 for it. It appears his mass paperbacks are getting re-released in hardback. They’re pretty good, but not $25 good. If I kept all the books I read, I’d need a snow plow to clear a path into my house. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I’ve never really understood the appeal of hardback anyway — unless it’s a reference book. I wouldn’t care if it’s published on toilet paper as long as I can read it.

I liked the convenience of ebooks and saving paper and resources, but I find myself purchasing less and less electronic books and returning to paperbacks. Most of the time eReader is one or two weeks late — or even months late. Many times they don’t even get the book at all. Or they’re missing one or two books from a series. It’s annoying.

I’m truly fed up with the greed and pricing games. I read a lot of different genres, and I’m just not going to pay hardback prices for books that are currently in paperback format. And I’m definitely not going to pay hardback prices for books that were previously published in mass paperback not so long ago.

If eReader is trying to drive customers away … I’d say they have definitely been succeeding with me. They’ve gotten on my last nerve.

And if anyone should get a nice discount on new book purchases, it should most definitely be electronic readers since those books don’t have to be printed, handled, shipped, or stocked. Geez, I thought we were suppose to be trying to go greener.
Caldwell

I do not see how they can justify an increase on their paperback pricing to eBook pricing other than maintaining profit and pushing readers away from eBooks. I do not understand why they would not want to add other formats to increase their profit just as AudioBooks did. I know that profits for eBooks would be less than paperbacks but the eBook Readers are growing but they also should consider reasonable pricing to increase purchases which in turn increases profits. You cannot charge someone $9.99 for a book that does not kill trees, employ expensive machinery and manpower but charge $7.99 for the ones that do this. We should not be punished for their own limited outlook.

There outta be a law: It is illegal to participate in electronic piracy on both sides of the equation, either making material that belongs to someone else available for downloading OR downloading material without the creator’s permission.

Then, to make it enforceable, just set up a bounty hunter situation where the first person to report an illegal download site gets the “bounty” = fines imposed on both the entity running the site and everyone who has downloaded illegally from the site.

The bounty hunters could report the sites to their local DA who would then issue a cease-and-desist order on the ISP, compelling the ISP to archive all the records from the site. Fine the hell out of all the participants to pay for the process.

A few well-publicized busts, and demand will dry up. Or am I crazy?

But it does seem that piracy ruins it for all the honest people, and I would love to figure out a way to get rid of them.

You aren’t kidding…I recently shelved a series that I write for one of my epubs and piracy played a HUGE part in that decision.

@ShilohWalker – The burden of creating a better ebook pricing system should not rest solely with the consumer. Sure, we can write letters and emails and I have and I know others who have – to no avail. Some publishers aren't going to listen to a consumer. Maybe they'll listen to authors. Like I said in the post, reasonable pricing should not be on the shoulders of just readers.

No, definitely it shouldn’t. I don’t think that was my implication-I just suggested that if enough readers complain, they are more likely to listen. The weird format of the paperback books that went out for a while…a very short while…a lot of readers complained about them and they stopped doing it. Was it solely because of reader complaints? I have no idea.

But readers complaining would have a lot more impact than the typical author. A couple of major names could maybe make a little bit of an impact. But the typical author isn’t a major name.

If it isn’t heard from both sides, it won’t help. And if it isn’t heard often from the readers’ side…again, I don’t see much of a change.

But it does seem that piracy ruins it for all the honest people, and I would love to figure out a way to get rid of them.

Now, once an ISP has been informed that a customer is breaking the law, they should take action, usually cancelling the account and cooperating with law enforcement, handing over records to someone with a warrant, that sort of thing. If they’re notified of wrong-doing on their system and do nothing, and refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, then that’s something they can be prosecuted for.

But just having a pirate site on their system doesn’t make them responsible from the get-go, and it shouldn’t. That’d cause more problems for everyone than it’d solve.

Angie

What if thieves kept going into the bank and taking money, and the only thing that ever happened was honest people sat around whining about “those pirates” and how unethical they were, but sheesh, I mean, there’s the money for the taking and, ya know, I’m sick of working for my money so why not help myself to some of that good money too?

But that’s not how it works. There’s things like police and jail time for thieves.

I guess this is a naïve question, but why not prosecute the ISPs that host the torrent sites that give away other people’s workproduct?

Since I don’t go around checking prices, I wouldn’t have figure this out until after the purchasr. Thanks for the heads up.

I know, I know, p2p network users and darknet people all call themselves pirates because it’s cool and shit. Whatever. When it comes to prosecution, an ‘illegal file sharer’ may or may not end up in civil court. Pirates always end up in at least criminal court, if not both civil AND criminal court.

Recently, the RIAA and the MPAA have been convincing judges that emailing a digital copy of a song to someone is the same as selling that song on a CD in the subway. They’re not the same. If someone in China prints out my ebooks and sells them without giving me a dime, his ass should be in jail. A fifteen-year old kid who uses Azureus to download a copy of my work should not. I’d rather he pay me, but he’s not doing anything worse than every single music teacher I’ve ever had who made photocopies of sheet music when the sheet music was out of print, or any of my teachers who printed photocopies of copyrighted articles, magazine clips, cartoons, photos, etc. throughout my education. All of those people breached copyright law. I don’t think they should be in jail.

As for DRM and ebook taxes, you can bet I will do everything in my power to never give those companies another cent of my money ever again. I’ll buy used; I’ll go the library. I’ll borrow copies from friends. I will not buy from them anymore.

Bottom line: publishers, distributors and authors who support DRM and high ebook prices will get my ire, my condescension, and my middle finger. What they will not get is my hard-earned money.

I'm sympathetic. Isn't it a real pain to get them into another format and still look good, though?

Not really, not with the MS Lit. (I’ve had a little trouble with Mobipocket.)