So What’s Up (and Down) with Ebooks?
So now that Hachette and Amazon have settled their epic feud, and we’re seeing the results of publisher negotiations with the retailer, we seem to be witnessing the revenge of traditional publishers when it comes to digital book pricing.
Last week I enthusiastically searched at Amazon for two books I could not wait to buy – so much that I was willing to pre-order them almost six months in advance of their release. The two books were Lisa Kleypas’s long-awaited Travis Family finale, Brown-Eyed Girl, and Daniel O’Malley’s Stiletto, the sequel to his highly entertaining and unique debut, The Rook. Kleypas’s book is published by Macmillan, O’Malley’s by Hachette. And both were $12.99 in Kindle format. Cue the sound of screeching brakes and a substantial thud as my enthusiasm crashed right against that pre-order button and skidded right off of it.
$12.99. For a pre-order. For a digital book.
The Kleypas I can almost understand, given the anticipation for the completion of her contemporary series. But the O’Malley? That one was more of a head-scratcher for me.
Sure, publishers say, digital books have costs built in, just like print books. And I agree. But, publishers say, we should value the intellectual property completely aside from the format. And I agree. Still, publishers say, creative content providers should be valued for their work. And I agree.
But I still think $12.99 for a digital work of commercial fiction is ridiculous. And baffling, especially in a market where for some traditional publishers sales are consistently down. And where you can get high quality, well-written, professionally produced books from small, digital only, and indie publishers and authors for $3, $4, or $5.
In fact, it’s even more curious when you look at the number of indie authors who are talking about their own plummeting sales. Check out this post from Carey Heywood, whose sales built and built until her fourth book, where she broke out and made it into the top 100 on Amazon. Her book went to #11 on Amazon and even made the NYT and USA Today lists, and she kept going:
By the time I published my fifth book, a follow up with decent buzz to my bestselling fourth book I had around 6,000 Facebook likes and 3,000 twitter followers. I had a professional cover, I had beta readers, and I had a blog tour (this time with one that was highly recommended). There is a statistical drop off expected for the second book in a series.
I hit publish on my fifth book.
I sold 1/10 the amount I did of my fourth.
By the time she publishers her sixth book, she had a PR firm and still the book, in Heywood’s terms, “bombed,” selling less than her debut. Books seven, eight, and nine also “bombed.”
For every author who seems to be doing really well in this new marketplace there’s another who is lamenting diminished sales. We hear that Kindle Unlimited is serving some authors really well, others not so much. And still more authors are entering the marketplace.
So what’s going on here? Is there any rhyme or reason, or is it just every author or publisher for themselves and whatever a reader is willing to pay is what they will pay?
I know there are many different issues going on here, and I don’t want to in any way suggest that they’re all related in any causal way.
Still, all of these scenarios have one thing in common, and that is reader behavior in purchasing and reading books.
So that makes me wonder how other readers are engaging with books – and with other, competing forms of entertaining – these days. Are you buying more print books; are you using the library more; are you turning to Netflix or Scribd or Kindle Unlimited instead of buying every book you read individually. How much are you willing to spend on a book, and are you buying more or less right now, and from where.
I’ll start:
I’m not paying $12.99 to pre-order a digital book. Not only do I refuse to pay that, but that price makes me feel so disrespected and exploited that I’ll either borrow it from the library or buy a used print copy. Because instead of trying to cultivate the loyalty evident in my willingness to buy a book six months in advance, I feel that $12.99 price is akin the publisher waving its middle finger at me. And so my pre-order finger is going to wave bye-bye.
If a publisher wants me to pay a price nearly commensurate with a hardcover copy from Target or other big box chain, I expect the same rights to come with the digital copy, including, the right to lend or borrow, the right to re-sell, and the right to own my copy outright without limitations like DRM. I was willing to swallow $9.99, but 30% more for the same diminished rights? No. Way.
I am the kind of reader who will routinely purchase anywhere from three to five books at a time. I have no problem spending my hard-earned money on books. Lower-priced books have resulted in more book purchases from me, especially spontaneous purchased. Anything below $4 or even $5 requires very little internal debate.
And yes, I have a Hulu account and am considering a Netflix account. I belong to Amazon Prime, but I haven’t sacrificed my book budget for video streaming or movies. And actually I’m buying way more audiobooks now that I have an Audible subscription and a substantial commute to work, so if anything I’m spending more on books overall.
I love my Kindle and even have a membership to Kindle Unlimited, but I still buy the vast, vast majority of my books. And I buy a lot of books. I don’t even seek out ARCs anymore; if I want to read a book, I buy it. What’s most frustrating to me is that there are SO MANY backlist titles I wish I could buy in digital that I have to buy used in print, while there are digital books that I find so ridiculously overpriced that I will buy them used in print, even though I’d way rather have them in digital. Even though I’m willing to buy them months in advance in a format where I abdicate numerous intellectual property rights that inhere to the reader through the First Sale Doctrine.
What I want to know is who the hell is paying $12.99 for a digital work of commercial fiction? Are these power readers or readers who buy one or two books a year? And what’s up with these authors who are going from substantial sales and list-making to substantial loss? How are reader patterns changing to result in these fluctuations?
So how are you acquiring books, and have your reading and book buying habits changed? Are other forms of entertainment taking some of that time and money? Has the availability of digital library books made any difference in how you’re getting books and reading?
“Who the hell is paying $12.99 for a digital work of commercial fiction?”
Not me. Even if it’s an author I really like. I’d rather not read a book at all, or wait for the price to drop when it comes out in paperback (if I still remember to look for it when that happens). I’m surprised that this sort of pricing is working for publishers, with so many good and more reasonably priced fiction out there.
For an awful long time now, I’ve refused to buy an e-book if it had the same (or greater) price as a ‘real’ book.
Although I have NO MORE ROOM in my house for paper books, I will always give them preference over the ethereal.
I will pay e-publishers direct $6 or $7 or $8 for an e-book because their print books are usually twice as much. But I refuse to let Amazon (for example) gain any more profit than necessary by having over-inflated prices for something so insubstantial.
I don’t pay more than six or seven dollars unless I’ve just been DYING to read the book.
I’ve also never bought hard cover books, preferring to wait for the cheaper paperback, and I wonder if there’s a bit of a parallel? If both hard covers and expensive e-books come out before the paperback, readers aren’t so much paying to read the story, they’re paying to read the story NOW. That hardback strategy has apparently worked well for booksellers for quite a while, so maybe they’re following a similar strategy with e-books? Or at least trying to ensure that the e-books don’t take away from their lucrative hard back sales?
Just guessing – otherwise, I have no idea what’s going on!
I won’t pay more than $6-$7 for an ebook & even for that price point, it has to be an author I love who is basically an auto-buy for me. Even if one of my auto-buys is higher than that, I’ll just wait for a price drop before buying. I’ll check the book out from my library in the meantime.
Last year, The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness & Skin Game by Jim Butcher were 2 books I had really been wanting to buy, but both of them were $11.99 or more on Kindle. So I waited & then late in the year, they each went on sale one day for $3.75, so I bought them then.
I want to support my favorite authors, but there’s only so much book budget to go around, so I have to wait for sales sometimes.
My limit seems to be in the $5 – $6 range. It’s obvious publishers don’t think the reader is their customer. Add in the fact that many publishers like Kensington, Harlequin, Carina, and Sourcebooks are no longer in ARe’s buy 10 program and I am now buying many more e-first and indies. It pains me to give up my favorite authors (again), but I’m finding new authors and stories I am enjoying.
I’ll only buy less than 5 books a year over $7.99. I wishlist and set up an ereaderiq alert or borrow from the library instead. There are plenty of other things to choose from. I can be patient.
I no longer buy ebooks most of the time, which is sad because last year 90% of my purchases were ebooks. I am so sorry but I will not pay $12 for your ebook when the paperback costs the same! I still believe this is a way for publishers to “keep” their paperback sales, which is dumb because not only would I bought the ebook, I would also buy the paperback (just like I did with Laurenston novel, the ebook was $9, I paid 5 with a coupon and the paperback was $12 I bought it on sale for $8). There was so much buzz about the death of paperback and that ebook sales were on fire that this is the way they found to control the ebook rising. As a reader I just can’t accept that an ebook costs the same as a paperback. I am sorry, I prefer to buy the paperback and then give it away to some library or friends :(
$12.99 is just too much for a digital book preorder. I’m perfectly happy to pay mass market prices for ebooks if I’m excited to read them, but once you hit trade paperback levels, you’ve lost me. There is genuinely less value to a digital copy. Even leaving aside the resale and lending issues, the inability to perform format conversions means that there is no guarantee any novel I own will still be accessible in a decade, when the file format may be long obsolete, much less the thirty-plus years I could reasonably expect from even a paperback novel. I have hardcover novels that were my mother’s in her childhood that I plan to pass on to my children, and that may easily survive to be read by my grandchildren. I’m not convinced Kindle can promise the same kind of longevity and that has to factor into price, just as it does with other tangible goods.
The big difference between video streaming services and ebook purchases is that the streaming services provide unlimited access to the entirety of their collection for a single set fee. It’s a subscription service, like an 18th century library, and if a show or film is unavailable, the subscriber can choose to watch anything else the service offers at no fee. There’s no fiction of ownership to leave the subscriber feeling cheated when content becomes unavailable to them.
A more exact parallel is to digital video purchasing, or the original iTunes store music DRM. Infamously, purchasing a theoretically permanent license to stream a video on Amazon Instant Video may result in the video being pulled from the service by the IP holder (often, in the case of films, to avoid conflict with licensing the content to HBO, on demand services, or pay per view) without warning, leaving the purchaser, who has often paid a price nearly equivalent to a DVD copy, unable to watch content they thought they owned.
On the other hand, I cheerfully purchase digital games. I’m not entirely sure why that doesn’t bother me, since they have the same license issues and DRM shenanigans, other than that because they’re software, this has been an inherent issue with games forever. There’s never been the same expectation of total ownership, especially with online gaming where your license is only good as long as the servers stay on. In addition, the gaming industry has gotten pretty good at the “purchase once, play on any device where it will run” model and has by and large made DRM painless via adopting Steam for PC (consoles have had invisible, built-in DRM for over a decade.) Games also aren’t subject to the same variable availability as video, and there’s a certain expectation of obsolescence in the medium, as technological changes render them unsupported on modern systems, that doesn’t exist with most other media.
I’ve never understood the pricing of ebooks vs physical books. Obviously the later have the price of materials, distribution, space on shelves, the risk of being left with dead stock – but there are no risks with eBooks – all the work is already done and anything on top is a bonus.
My other gripe is the books you might actually want to borrow (ie the expensive ones) usually don’t qualify for Kindle Unlimited. ARGH!
I buy a lot of e-books using these general rules (values rounded up. 2.99 = $3)
Free – no brainer, one-click
Up to $4 – will most likely one-click pretty quickly, especially if it is an author I like. But will try new authors often in this price range
$4 – $6 – auto buy authors, one click. Others and unknowns, get sample first, then may sit in the decision for a while.
$7 – $10 – only my favorite authors get one-clicked here. May download a sample written by someone new if I read a rave review, still reluctant to buy
> $10 – it would have to be one of my very favorite authors. And even then, I have a hard time justifying not waiting and buying the hardback or paperback book used.
The higher the price, the more likely I will
drop an author from my auto buy category if I don’t absolutely love their latest work.
I have subscriptions to Scribd and Audible. I only buy a book about every other month or so. When I do buy, it’s a book I really want to read, RIGHT NOW, and I’ll pay up to $8. I really like Scribd.
I use eReaderIQ to watch for price drops on favorite authors and high priced books. I can’t tell you how unexcited I am when I get emails for a book that’s dropped from $10 to $8. I think $3 is the price point that will get me to buy an expensive book I’ve been watching.
I used to read a lot of print books from my library, but I strongly prefer digital now – I like the ability to increase font size and read in the dark on my iPad. I tried digital books from the library but found them very frustrating. The wait list for books way typically more than a month. I didn’t survive the library’s latest app update.
I’m maybe in the minority here–I will pay $12.99 for a new release ebook from a good publisher, and did so pretty routinely in the last year or so, when I was working a lower-paying job: that $12.99 gave me the right to read that new book from a favorite author whenever I wanted. I use the library all the time, but for new releases from authors I already love, I know I want to own the book, I know I don’t want to wait, and I know I want to help support the author. The ebook price was still cost-effective compared to the $18-$24 hardcover (and that’s with Amazon discounting it). If I have strong reason to believe I’ll enjoy it, I’m happy to spend the money.
I hesitate more if it’s not a favorite author, but I’ve still spent $10 or so on ebooks, especially nonfiction ebooks, which tend to be pricier. With an unknown or uneven author, I’d almost certainly get it from the library or wait for a lower price, whereas I’ve more impulsively picked up books that are free-to-seven dollars.
I don’t have a lot of money–a little more now than I did last year, but the surplus mostly goes into retirement funds, so the spending amount is pretty much the same–so this isn’t a case of “money, who cares?” I think maybe it’s partly a genre issue: I read a lot, but I read extensively in many genres, and the lower-pricing seems to come mostly in romance and horror (a little bit in SFF, but not from the big publishers). Higher ebook prices are kind of par for the course in literary (where I tend to buy paper anyway), nonfiction, and crime, so the lower price point has never really stabilized for me as the average. If I’m buying an ebook, it’s usually because it’s either much cheaper than the paper edition, has an embarrassing cover, or would be really thick and shelf-space-consuming otherwise, so, for example, one of the things I currently have lined up to pick up at some point is this ridiculously massive Dostoevsky biography that would snap under its own weight in paperback. It’s $14.99 in ebook, but in that case, I’m paying for what seems to be great material in a convenient, easy-to-read format, so I don’t mind. I haven’t bought it yet only because I have so much in my TBR pile. But I think this comes down to that: there’s so much I want to read, and so much I like reading, that I’m less likely to take chances. A known favorite author, or a book that’s received great reviews, is a more dependable point, so I’ll pay more for something I’m almost certainly going to like, as opposed to picking up three riskier books for the same price altogether.
So I don’t mind this, or feel exploited by it: I still read enough in paper that being able to get a new release, in whatever format, for only thirteen dollars seems like a win to me, because before that, I was paying eighteen at least, and before *that*, before I regularly used Amazon and had free shippping, I’d have to pay about twenty-six dollars (and was much stingier about who counted as a favorite author in consequence). I might be the only one, though.
My budget is tight enough that, sadly, I debate whether to buy books at $0.99 in case something I really, really want suddenly goes on sale right after I use up my ebook allowance for the month. The most I’ve paid is $8, and that involved a favorite and winning a $50 gift card.
While I wouldn’t buy an ebook at $12.99, I’m honestly not shocked that a new book, presumably coming out in hardcover, is selling for that much. As for who’d buy it, I’d guess people who don’t really think about what they aren’t getting when they buy an ebook and just look at the price vs the print version and see it as cheaper.
Most of my books come from the library at the moment, and most are print because they’re more likely to have them, or have them available, in that format. (Plus, even if I can’t renew them, the checkout period tends to be longer.) Though they still sometimes let me down. (I really can’t afford Vision in Silver, but none of the libraries in my system (74) seems to have bought a copy yet. :( )
The only times I pay full price for a print book is if I’m in an indie bookstore, or I’m at an author signing and the indie bookstore is selling the books, or I’m at a conference and really want to have a particular book signed. And then there are the IRL book club books, which are often unavailable at the library–it KILLS me to buy a book by an author I don’t know I’ll like for over $10, so then I’m after the $0.01 + $3.99 shipping used paperback from Amazon. Last month I bought the ebook for $12 as a last resort and I hated the book–AAACK.
And how much of that $12 does the author see anyway? I can tell you exactly how much I earn per book depending on the format, but what with the returns system, royalties paid every six months and publishers’ decisions to make a book free without consulting the author, I feel like I’m supporting the publisher way more than the author when I click on the Buy button.
Happy there were others upset by $12.99 pricing.. Sorry Lisa Kleypas. What would have been an auto buy is now a wait for the paperback. I spend about 30-40$ monthly on e books. I will auto buy $4 and under. I seek out used paperbacks for back list because my limit on a book is $5 unless it’s brand new. My favorite authors are eloisa James and Julia Quinn and their new prices are $6.64. i wish publishers understood that most ebook buyers still buy physical copies. Anything above $7 is ridiculous. I also read general fiction like Lisa Scottoline and Maria Semple, for their books I will wait until the ebook is less than $7. With the plethora of books out there finding new authors to read is easy.
Sounds like the 12.99 is the initial mark up price while the bk is concurrently out in hardback. You pay that price if you want it RIGHT NOW, just like you do with hardcover. You wait and eventually the ebook price will go down? It had better, because in the end, there’s no way I’m effing paying 12.99 for a fiction ebook! Right?
I’ve paid $12.99 or $9.99 for a few ebooks. But only MUST-read-on-release-day types (like Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series or a much anticipated In Death book). But very few authors are ones I’ll pay that amount for. Otherwise I’ll read in hardcover from the library and wait to add to my ebook colection until the paperback release and a price drop.
Haven’t publishers said they have to price ebooks at a certain higher price because people won’t buy the print or hardcover? If an ebook is under $5, who is going to buy a print book at double or triple the price?
I will not pay $12.99 for an ebook. Not even an ebook by an author I love when it’s just out in hardcover and I really really want to read it – especially not when I can buy a used copy of the hardcover, read it and then either sell it back or (If I really loved it) send it off to get scanned in and converted to a versatile format – the latter is a behavior I developed thanks to agency pricing, fwiw. I wouldn’t pay $12.99 for a book at all, really – before ebooks I stalked libraries and used book sales. I read a lot and I read fast and I have finite disposable income.
I have all kinds of media subscriptions – audible and scribd and Netflix and crunchy roll and Hulu+ and Amazon prime and kindle unlimited and acorntv – and the combined cost runs less than a slightly above basic cable tv package, so I feel pretty much okay about that spending, but I entered those subscriptions knowing I was paying for potentially ephemeral content, that stuff I enjoyed might just suddenly be gone and that if I wanted to properly own it I needed to purchase not a file but a physical thing – a book or DVD or cd or manga – and figure out how to manage the accessibility/portability/format issues for myself – which has turned out to be surprisingly simple and not particularly expensive.
I’m a book stalker. I have an 11-page wishlist at Amazon that I check every morning for sales. I have a $7.99 upper limit for known authors and I’m not really happy there. With a large TBR pile I can afford to sit and wait for a price drop. I have noticed two things about prices from my daily scan. First, that pretty much every one of the books sitting above the $7.99 limit that isn’t a pre-order has stuck there for years. They want their ego-trip $10 more than they want a sale. And second, the $1.99 category has pretty uniformly jumped up to $2.99.
I’m not sure that even the publishers know what they are pricing at. I’m looking at a long series from one of the big 5. I’m not surprised that Book #40 is $9.99 as it’s newish. And book #34 is a decade old and a sensible $3.99. But why is book #32 priced at $8.99? Do they spin a giant Price is Right wheel to assign prices?
One of the things that I continue to find a consistent irritation in newly released digital books from larger publishers is the presence of a large amount of errors. It seems obvious that their digital books are being put together from pre-proofed ARCs or galleys. Yes, many publishers do update the book files eventually, but that does not make up for the fact that I had to deal with the immense frustration of reading all ‘s as #$%^&s, or whatever the coding is, all throughout a book. It’s clear that the manuscripts are not going to paper-print with all of these errors. Add to that these big publishers charging more for a pre-proofed digital copy than for the post-proofed paper copy…well, I’m not good at math, but even I can see that it adds up to clear disrespect for book buyers.
Perhaps they’ve convinced themselves that digital readers deserve less quality. Perhaps they’ve convinced themselves that digital readers are less savvy readers and simply won’t notice. Perhaps they’re colluding with chains that benefit from selling cheaper print copies.
I’m very, very curious to see how this all comes out in the wash in a decade or so.
Oh, and I don’t check out ebooks from the library. I don’t mind the wait lists and I can put up with (although I do not love) overdrive, but I am disgusted and infuriated by how publishers have treated public libraries wrt ebooks and I can find workarounds so that I don’t use up the limited ebook borrows libraries get. Ebook formatting versatility is really valuable to increasing accessibility, which I can really see in my small rural community which has an excellent library that also loans devices to people and so publisher willingness to jack libraries (libraries!!!) around makes me frantic.
@KT Grant: I’ve seen things like this alluded to. But to me, it makes no sense. If they are simply trying to make sales, they should be willing to sell their books in any format, at a price point that sells the most (and is sensible in comparison to their costs, of course). Instead, though, I see that they’re so invested in trying to keep the paradigm from shifting that they’re more interested in propping up brick and mortar big chains (because I think it would be foolish to believe they really care about indie shops) just so they don’t have to give in to the digital market.
I suppose, though, that the publishers have made strides in winning public opinion. Enough people seem to think that this is still all amazon’s doing and that the publishers are just helpless flotsam caught up in the digital tide and trying to survive. Plenty of people still seem to think that the 12.99 must be because amazon is taking 90% of the cut. (Or perhaps that’s just my Facebook feed.)
Personally, these prices make me feel like I’m the cash cow the publishing houses are trying to milk – and the milk is running very low, along with the love of getting shiny new e-books.
I just checked the amazon.com page for “Brown-Eyed Girl” and the kindle version seems to be selling for $7.76, which isn’t as bad as $12.99 – is that just because I’m in the UK, or did somebody make a mistake with the initial pricing?
My general rule of thumb for e-book purchasing is no more than $1 for every 10,000 words, although I’ve broken that rule a few times for certain authors and certain aspects of interest to me. I think a lot harder about a purchase if it’s over $6, and I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than $9.99 for an e-book. Also, I still don’t buy DRM’d e-books – I prefer to get those through the library or buy a paper copy. And yes, I do this even if the e-book is way cheaper than the paper version. For me, it’s the principle of the thing.
$12.99 is just to much, its over half my monthly book budget. Usually if I want an ebook that is that high I wait until the paperback book is released because than the ebook price will be cheaper. Though I actually think its not right that ebook prices have anything to do with that hardback/paperback editions. Ebooks are their own medium and should be priced for what they are.
I will not ever pay $12.99 for an electronic book-even if it is from my favorite author. I will get it from my local library in print or e-format. If I like it enough, I will set a price alert for it, and wait until the e-book is much more reasonable, or I will purchased a used paperback. In general, $5.99 is the most I will ever spend on an e-book. There are just too many restrictions to spend any more money on e-books!
In the days before ebooks, I was the type of reader who would wait for paperback because I didn’t like paying HC prices and didn’t have room for them anyway. Now I mainly read ebooks, sometimes buying and sometimes borrowing from the library or using Scribd. I’m on a limited book budget these days so I’m definitely not paying $12.99 even for my favorite authors (occasionally I break this rule if I have received gift cards). I’ve pretty much shifted away from reading new releases anyway. I’d rather wait until the hype dies down and the new release noise has left my head before I pick up a book anyway.
@Lynne Connolly:
For me in Norway – Amazon.com price of Brown Eyed Girl is $11.19 at the moment, unless I want to buy the Kindle Edition August 11, 2015, in which case the price would be $16.24…
For mystery novels, I can pay up to $12.99 because usually they are hardcover novels and I was paying about the same anyway. Another thing is that, it depends on the author like say Jo Nesbo, I’d gladly pay $12.99 because he delivers and I want to support him and his publisher for making his work available over here. He’s about the only one I think.
I screech and halt the brakes when I see older books finally digitized and they are priced for $12.99. Frex: Mary Willis Walker’s Edgar winning novel, The Red Scream, finally came out in ebook but the publisher initially charged $12.99 for both that book and the second book in the series. Both were published in the late 1990’s. How does that even make any sense? They recently dropped the price down to $10.99. I’ve set up an alert to tell me when they are both within reasonable pricing range like $5.99.
When it comes to my favorite auto-buy writers, price is not a prohibitive factor for me. I’d buy the Lisa Kleypas novel for $12.99 if it stayed at that price after a month or so. But if I wanted to read it now and I’ve been waiting to read that book since forever, I’d buy it. Price becomes an issue for authors who I don’t know and for works that are being reissued at ridiculous prices.
@Lynne Connolly:
@Lynne Connolly:
Amazon automatically geolocks the price even if you visit other sites. Its the UK edition.
$12.99 is my general boundary for what I’m willing to pay for an ebook. There are a very few number of authors I’m willing to do that for–generally my upper tier of SF/F authors who I’ve been following for a while and whose work I wish to support with my money. E.g., Jim Butcher, Tanya Huff, Kat Richardson.
There have been a few rare exceptions in which I’ve been willing to go over $12.99 for an ebook, generally for stuff I’ve wanted in French which I’d have a REAL hard time getting otherwise. But those exceptions are indeed rare.
The vast majority of my ebook purchases are at $7.99 or lower. If I know it’s an author I’ll want to read eventually but will not need to read the instant the book comes out, I’ll hold off on buying the ebook until the price drops. Or I’ll look for it to go on sale.
I do buy the majority of ebooks I want–though if it’s an author I don’t already know, I’ll check him or her out from the library first before I commit to buying the work. Book subscription services like Scribd aren’t particularly useful to me, since I’m blessed to live in a city with two active local library systems that have electronic checkout. So I don’t have much cause to need a book subscription service.
This is literally how I fell off the Mary Balogh wagon (and never got back on). Mid-Huxtables, the eBook was suddenly trade priced. So I waited for the massmarket edition to come out and for the eBook to be repriced. But then the mm came out and the eBook STAYED at the trade price. I checked a couple more times and they eBook price had still not been lowered, and then I gave up.
On the other had, I was REALLY pleased when the preorder price for Brigg’s latest Alpha and Omega book was $5.99 even though the book was released in hardback. It’s $9.09 now, which I would still happily pay for her.
I won’t pay over $7.99 for an ebook. Period. Even if it’s by my favorite author and the synopsis contains all my favorite catnip tropes. I add that title to an Amazon wish list, where it remains until the price drops. If I want to read it sooner, I’ll keep an eye out for a used paperback on my next trip to the local bookshop. I have a specific amount budgeted each month for books, and once it’s gone, I stop buying books for the month.
I pay more than that for books by authors I really love and want to read.
I tend to get carried away and have to put a tight tether on myself to not go book crazy once a week.
There are some authors that I do still read, but they are no longer must buy the first day the book is out. So I wait until the book comes out in paperback since sometimes the e-book price lowers. Or I go to the library and put a copy on hold.
@Anne V: I’ve heard of a new or newish initiative that’s going to let indie authors get their ebooks into libraries. No cost to us but also no royalties–it’s a discovery/marketing tool for us but should be a boon to readers, as our books are generally better formatted.
I read digitally pretty exclusively, across many platforms–Nook, Kindle, Audible, Scribd, Overdrive–I’ve bought 4 physical books over the past year. Truthfully, I don’t think I would spend $12.99 for an e-book. At that price, might as well order the (most often discounted) physical copy from Amazon, or use my Audible credit! I seldom buy e-books for more than $3.99, the exception being those (maybe 5? seems like fewer and fewer these days) authors who are autobuys for me, knowing that I am paying a premium to Read It Now–and even then my limit is about $10. I will say that, having spent that much on an e-book, if I don’t enjoy the book then the author comes off the autobuy list for the future, and I will wait for the library copy or a discount. There are a very few authors (for example, Deborah Harkness, who is a college friend) that I will buy in every format–digital, physical, and audiobook–because I want to support the author.
OK, here goes: I haven’t bought ANY fiction (hardcover, trade, mass market, or ebook) in about three years. Yes, three years. What am I reading instead? Long magazine articles, my Twitter feed, my Tumblr dashboard, and fanfiction. A lot of people couldn’t subsist on an all-fanfic diet, but apparently I can. I know I love the characters, and my fandom has been very prolific for several years, and will continue to be so, because there’s a new movie every few months, and decades worth of comic books. I have tens of thousands of stories to choose from in just that fandom, not to mention the thousands of other fandoms out there.
I know that publishers and indie authors can’t compete with free entertainment (or at least, entertainment that’s free outside of paying for internet access) and I’m sorry for that. But for years before my unplanned abandonment of published fiction, I’d been having a difficult time finding fiction of any genre that really grabbed me, for a whole host of reasons, and fanfic got me out of that slump.
The vast majority of the books I buy are in the $4-7 range for retail price, and I frequently wait until there’s a sale or I have a Kobo coupon. For more expensive fiction I’ll get the book from the library if I really want to read it and I can’t use a coupon. I buy almost no non-fiction in e-format unless it’s pleasure reading. I need the page numbers and the ability to read around, flip back and forth in work-related non-fiction and that doesn’t work well for me in ebooks.
I buy far fewer books than I used to, mostly because I realized that my TBR was out of control, and because I was buying books when they came out and then not getting around to reading them for a while. I sometimes miss joining in on the new-book conversation, but I also like reading after the hype has subsided. It’s really easy to buy books without thinking too much because each individual book isn’t that expensive, but in total they add up.
I have been buying more paperbacks this last year simply because they cost the same in both mmpb and ebook. I refuse to spend more than $3 on an ebook because I buy all my faves in physical format and use ebooks to find new authors.
I wanted to get the new Bishop and the new Briggs books last week, but my budget could only fit one. And holy gosh why are hardcovers now $20??? It seems like they were $15 not that long ago…
I have a pretty simple rule of thumb for myself. I buy pretty much anything under five dollars that catches my interest. Five to ten dollars, I need to know the author and really want to read the book. Over ten dollars for an ebook? With very few exceptions I won’t do it. I’ll look for a used paperback, sale, or just pass on it. There are so many great stories out there that are more reasonably priced.
Excuse me while I weep gently over the UK prices for Brown Eyed Girl. The Kindle version is £5.03 (not too outrageous) but the paperback is £13.99 ($21). Ouch!
It’s not the sort of book that’s likely to make it into my local library either and I’d be surprised if it goes on sale in the book section of supermarkets (usually the only places challenging Amazon on price). I’ve got the rest of the series in PB though and I’m a completist so it looks like I’ll have to shell out.
I get most of the books and ebooks I read through my public library, mostly because I have a very strict budget for books of any sort this year. Also, my library has done an outstanding job of providing new releases. That means $12.99 is just too much for a pre-order ebook. Due to my experience with technology, when I want to own a book, I want a paper copy if at all possible. If I am not getting a paper copy, I refuse to spend more that $5 on an ebook simply because I’ve had so many problems with actually being able to read ebooks.
I was all set to hit the preorder button for Brown-Eyed Girl…and then froze at the price. Shucks. Nope. Not gonna go there. These days my TBR list is big enough that I can wait a year or two for a better price or its appearance at the library. Plus there are plenty of more reasonable buys appearing all the time. It’s a bummer, but I refuse to pay $12.99 to license a book.
I love this post!
$12.99 <—-this should never happen for an ebook and really I think publishers are shooting themselves in the foot with that kind of price point. I have done the same thing: been so angry over a price point of an ebook that I refused to buy it (even after it dropped) and instead waited for my library to get it (which lately is where I am getting most of my mainstream publisher fiction). I do the same thing with people who turn trilogies into 4 books and so on. There is a difference between the value of something and gauging people for it.
I have over $2000 in unread ebooks on my kindle (I know I just did a freaking inventory) so clearly I am not opposed to buying ebooks. However an ebook should never be more than a print book. I agree there are some built in costs and they should be acknowledged in the price. However on going storage, production, and upkeep fees are limited in comparison to other formats and that should be factored in also. So price points should be different between physical and digital books. It irks me when the "ebooks cost money to" argument is thrown into the mix because I think we all acknowledge there is a cost associated. Just hardly anyone that has worked in a corporate environment/has a tv/or done taxes where the message is "conserve costs by going digital" is going to buy they cost as much as other formats.
I do believe that there is a happy medium and some it is going to retrain people to look for quality at a reasonable price. I am more than willing to pay $3.99, $4.99, $5.99 for something but more than that I have to really have an established relationship with the author. I now won't pay more than $7.99 (and that is rare/must be a reread type of book) because for something that can not be shared that is my cap.
If I was looking at it from a marketing perspective it is an over-saturated market at the moment. There are so many authors, so many books, and readership is probably pretty close to what it was a few years ago. When ebooks first appeared it got more people hooked but the books were more limited. Now the books are more plentiful but the reader market is probably close to what it was before. There was bound to be a "drop" because of that. I don't have a clue what the solution is though because you don't want to tell writers not write and it is really hard to make readers out of non-readers.
I use my library a lot! To me it is the solution to supporting authors but not having to pay the "over my line" eBook prices.
I suspect the publishers are either a few sandwiches short of a picnic or being risk-adversive. Here’s what Amazon is going to pay them in royalties.
$12.99 x 0.35 = $4.55 (unlike Apple, Amazon only pays 35% royalties for ebooks priced over $9.99)
Supposed the publisher priced that book at the maximum for 70% royalties.
$9.99 x 0.70 = $7.00 (File download fees would probably knock about 30 cents off that.)
Indeed, if the publisher priced this book a bit lower still, here are the royalties:
$6.99 x 0.70 = $4.90 (file download fees would reduce that to about the same as for a $12.99 price)
So this isn’t about more profit for the publisher. Maybe the publisher is stupid, but I suspect they might be “risk-adverse.” That means:
1. They fear that advance ebook sales will glut sales of the print version, leaving them with unsold copies and confusing their effort to predict print sales. That’s also why publishers who have a hardback edition often delay the paperback edition. Pricing the ebook high, they may believe, will sell more print editions. More print copies sold mean a lower per-copy printing cost.
2. They fear that physical bookstores, frightened by those advanced ebook sales, won’t stock these books at all and thus they won’t sell many to the bookstore trade. Again, that means print copies left in warehouses.
Remember, publishers think serious about the prices they set and that, in general people have reasons for what they do.
–Michael W. Perry, co-author of Lily’s Ride, a young adult novel set in 1870s North Carolina.
I’ll pay $9.99 – 12.99 for some books. Quite a few that I’ve come across recently have been in that price range (though they aren’t typically romance books.) The Girl With All The Gifts, The Goldfinch, Snowblind, Firefight, etc. These aren’t really favorite authors, but either I enjoyed a previous book or I’ve seen enough recommendations that they’re worth that price for me.
I was going to say that I don’t get a lot of reading time, so spending that much on books seems justifiable to me (like taking myself out to a movie, which usually runs about $10 – $15. But it’s not really about the time; sometimes I’ll squeeze in a self-published work (post apocalyptic is my current favorite) and I wouldn’t pay $12.99 for a 200-page zombie novel. But that’s probably because there are a ton of zombie novels that I can choose from and I’m not relying on trusted recommendations; I’m just browsing online at Amazon and picking out something that seems decent (based on reviews) for a relatively low price (up to $3.99). That’s actually how I find the majority of the books in my TBR — either picking them up during sales listed here at DA because they look decent and I might eventually get to them, or seeing something in the also-boughts at Amazon for a low price, but I’d never have picked them up if they weren’t on sale.
So I think the difference for me comes down to: If I KNOW I’ll read it, I’ll pay $12.99 or more. That’s more like the movie price for me: I never buy a ticket at the theater and go back home. Even if the movie sucks, it’s a sure thing that I’ll spend the time with it, and I don’t mind spending $15 for a few hours of entertainment.
But If I think it might languish in my TBR for a while (or maybe forever) I’ll only buy it if it’s on sale or less than five dollars.
I buy (and read) a lot of books in a year. I ready 99% of everything I download, so I don’t hoard free book. I don’t read one to two books a year. So, I’m cost sensitive.
I usually stick to Under $6.00 for ebook. There are a few select authors or types of books (nonfiction) that I’ll go up to $10.00. But I was never a hard back reader. I never had to have the book when it first came out and would happily wait with my TBR pile until the paperback came out.
I’m also a big audiobook fan. I love Amazons Whispersync. I’ll always go for ebook and audio if the combined is under 12.00.
As for indie authors who were best sellers that are now struggling… It might just be the ebb and flow of the reading public. NA was hot for several years, I’ve heard in my reading groups that some people have NA fatigue and want to try a new genre. That is one of the things agents have always been good for, they know what’s hot and what isn’t selling in the Traditional publishing world. As an indie author, you’re on your own. It could well boil down to readers jumping on a new hot genre and only the true fans are sticking with an author that is writing the same type of books.
Interesting topic. I would not pay $12.99 for an ebook, period. But then, I wouldn’t pay much more than $5. And, also, I rarely pay more than $2. I constantly troll for deals and wait until something is on sale. If it’s an author I know and love in the $3-5 range, I’ll just buy it. If it’s a new author but sounds interesting and it’s more than $.99, I look on scribd and my local libraries (both print and kindle format). Rarely will I pay more than $2 for a new to me author.
But I’m not sure my cheapness is necessarily related to ebooks. In my mispent (and very broke all the time) young adulthood, I bought books all the time from B&N and borders. When I realized that I could save a ton of $$ for other things, I switched to used bookstores, half.com and libraries (all pre-ereader time frame). So I’ve been pretty cheap about books for a long time–even though I usually read 50-100 books a year, depending on the year.
I have been having some philosophical twinges about that cheapness because I’m starting to feel an obligation to make sure that authors make enough $$ so they keep writing. At least the good ones :) And it occurs to me that libraries and $.99 purchases aren’t helping that cause.
That said, $12.99 is like a great big middle finger from the publisher. For all the reasons Jane mentioned about not owning the content (it could disappear tomorrow) and not being able to lend it out or resell it etc., ebooks don’t have as much value for me.
While I think $12.99 is a ridiculously high price for an ebook, I can think of a book I paid that much for without regret last year — The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. It was a wonderful book and I’m not sorry I spent that much, but I wish it had been priced more affordably, not only to save me some money, but so that more of my friends could have tried it. Yesterday the price finally dropped to $8.99, following the book’s publication in mass market paperback. But $8.99 still seems high, especially for an ebook that has been out for a year.
With that said, I think the bulk of my book budget gets spent on sale books priced at $2.99 and under. Since I’m a slow reader, I now have more of those than I’ll have time to read in the next ten years, and I don’t get that much satisfaction from hoarding them for the future since they go “stale” in my digital TBR pile. I find myself wondering why I bought so many of them and wishing I’d saved the money. I’m not sure which is worse — having to pay $12.99 for a book I really want and plan to read, or buying four $2.99 books I may never get to? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad so many books are so affordable, just sorry I’m not more discriminating when faced with sale prices.
I will pay up to $6 or $7 for an novel-length e-book without thinking much of it, and I’ll pay $9.99 for books I really want to read. I very, very rarely buy books above $10 though, because that’s more than the typical mass market paperback…I just can’t justify it to myself. I used to sign out digital books from the library, though I haven’t done that as much lately because I like owning the book.
Generally, no, I won’t spend $12.99 on an ebook. I didn’t even buy the latest Brandon Sanderson Reckoners book at $9.99, and he’s usually a must-buy for me. This morning, I did buy his latest self-published novella, though, at $2.99. That said, I do have one book on pre-order, and I pre-ordered it at $14.99. Because of the way Amazon’s pre-order system works, right now, my invoice is $12.74, and I’m hoping it will come down again before release date. Why did I pre-order something at a ridiculous price? It’s the sequel to Sanderson’s Alloy of Law, and I’ve been waiting so long for the sequel that I’ll swallow the pre-order price to start reading it on release day. However, I won’t do that very often and only for certain authors.
I also have a Scribd subscription and love it. I use that for high-priced trad pub novels, and it’s saved me tons of money.
No. I’m not paying $12.99 for an ebook. Glancing through the posts upthread, I’m clearly Cheapy McCheapSkate, because my top price point for an ebook is low. I’m always on the lookout for a deal, which means $3.99 or less. I might be tempted to go a few dollars over that for a favorite author, but no more than $6.
Recently, I broke down and bought the [ebook] sequel to a YA novel that both my husband and I absolutely loved. It was $9.99, but I, uh, shared it with hubs, so I figure it worked to to half that. But that only happens once in a very blue moon.
Ultimately, if you’re willing to wait, nearly every book comes down in price. Or is available at the library. Hubs and I watch popular shows like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead on DVD, so I’m accustomed to waiting for my fix. With so many entertainment options, including books, movies, games, there’s always something to occupy my time until a book hits the sweet spot, price-wise. The danger, of course, to publishers and authors, is that if they wait too long to drop the price, I’ll have forgotten about the book and moved on.
I’ve seen this a lot when the print book is hardback like the Kleypas. The ebook will be $12.99 and then when the mass market paperback is released the ebook price (most likely) will go down to paperback price. THAT I don’t get. Yeah a hardback vs paperback price is different but that ebook didn’t change formats so why the price drop?! I’ve seen this 95% of books. That’s why I wait for the paperback to come out to get the ebook at a lower price or I see if my library has it for FREE. And in some cases it’s even cheaper to get the audiobook over the ebook.
I absolutely would not pay anywhere the price of print for a digital book. Sorry, when I own those books fair and squares, without the fear that they’ll be rendered obsolete the next time Microsoft or adobe or whoever decides to tighten their grasp on what I pay for.
If I’m going to pay print prices, I’ll wait until it’s in print, and if I remember, I’ll buy it then. Authors have lost me as a reader, through no fault of their own, by this pricing practice of their publishers.
When I first got back in to reading I didn’t really have a set limit on how much I would spend on an ebook but now I do. I refuse to pay even 9.99 for an e. I’m the type that doesn’t mind going to Target or HPB and grabbing the paperback for 3 bucks more. I may never read it again but who cares. Like you mentioned I can at least loan it out or something. I always want to ask authors how the feel when their books are priced ridiculously high. I find it crazy especially with so many other non published authors out here with even better work.
@Michael W. Perry:
I’m not sure your math is correct. While the 35% instead of 70% is what indie authors get from Amazon, publishers have their own deals with the Zon, and get paid accordingly. I’d suspect the publisher IS getting more money on that $12.99 book than if they priced it lower.
Would they sell more books if they priced it lower? That’s a different discussion.
I planned to pre-order Stiletto but the $12.99 made me stop. I would have been willing to buy the hardback but…no hardback pre-order available.
I’m NEVER paying $12.99 for an ebook (again). When I first started reading ebooks I paid $13+ for a Mercedes Lackey new release (direct from publisher). The book was riddled with typos/errors – and the publisher refused to refund me. I’ve been burned once, never again.
I pre-ordered the new Shelly Laurenston but the ebook was so high that I decided on the print – and even then only ordered it after Amazon gave me a 30% off coupon. And I’m still thinking of cancelling that order because the price is STILL almost $9.
My monthly book budget is $20.
So, O’Malley lost a sale, Laurenston barely got a sale and the only auto-buy author for me is Ilona Andrews and her Kate Daniels series is now in HB. So on months that Kate releases, no other author gets a sale from me.
I agree that anything over $10 for an ebook makes me think long and hard before buying. When GRR finally publishes the next book, I’ll buy it regardless of price. When Hilary Mantel finally comes out with the new Cromwell book, I’ll buy it. Price won’t matter to me because I want to read those books. That’s two; everything else can wait until the price comes down. Lots to read in the meantime. I subscribe to seven or either services that tell me every day about low cost or free books. I have more books in my TBR pile than I will live to read. Still, I keep buying because I can’t resist a bargain. Lots of bargains around to choose from.
Have to admit, my hard limit for e-book is a Julie James $7.99. Even for favourite authors, I won’t go beyond that. In reality, though, the highest I’ve ever paid for a book is $5.99. Otherwise, I either wait for a sale—I have a gazillion e-books I bought at, say, $0.99 to $2.99 waiting to be read—or purchase the print book if only for resale value. My subscription to Scribd probably also influences my current threshold.
This is like with Anne Bishop’s new series. Murder of Crows has only recently dropped to an acceptable list price, from some $15 on release then $12 when paperback came out. I can say I understand and accept that this is how the market moves, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it or take part in it.
I’m from the Philippines. Logged out of Amazon, I get $14.99 for Kindle, with a hilarious “Digital List Price” of $26.99. http://i.imgur.com/Y8Rn3o2.png Unfortunately, libraries in my country aren’t likely to carry this title until after about five years.
I just checked and Brown-Eyed Girl shows up at $13.33 for me. So not only is it overpriced, but Amazon has also decided to add on its own charges.
I guess the silver lining is that at least I can buy it. A friend of mine lives in a country where everything is geoblocked, which is an inducement to piracy if ever I saw one.
$12.99 for a pre-order? Not a chance. Not even for Lisa Kleypas. I’m a “power reader” I guess you could say. Digital books have become an integral part of my home library and like you, I don’t require a lot of inner debate to spend my hard earned cash on that one-click button on amazon for books $5 or under. But if I can buy a print book for cheaper than the ebook? I’ll go for the print book every time.
The Rook came out sometime ago, I remember I enjoyed it, and that the ending was interesting?? Maybe? I do know I got it from the library. I’m not going to spend that on the sequel though. At that price I’ll reserve it from the library first and see. Now what would be interesting is if they drop the price on The Rook ebook – if they drop it – say to $2, I might buy The Rook, and if it really was as good as I remembered then maybe I wouldn’t wait for the sequel from the library and I’d buy the ebook at $12 because that would work out at about $7 for two quality (presumably) published full-length stories.
I used to pay that occasionally, but it’s always bugged me. Honestly, I agree with those who think publishers are shooting themselves in the foot. As a voracious reader–and a formerly voracious book-buyer–I’ve started using the hell out of my local library’s Overdrive. It’s changed how I select books, but I’ve been very happy with what I’ve been reading since the switch.
Reducing my book budget from about mumblecouplehundredmumble a month to $15 has also made a nice addition to retirement savings, so hey: thank you, greedy publishers. I will think of you while reading library books on the beach when I achieve financial independence. ;)
(Part of what set me off was a year-old novel that I was DESPERATE to read … selling for $16.99, digital. Yeesh. My library had it.)
International publishing is odd. “Brown Eyed Girl” is on pre order on amazon.co. uk at £5.03 (say $7.57), not cheap but not too bad for an ebook published simultaneously with the hardback, so I’ll be buying it for my wife. The hardback though is much more expensive in the UK at the equivalent of $25.41.
I guess that Piatkus wants to sell the ebook and does not worry about the impact on sales of hardbacks (or of the paperback as this is also expensive). Maybe this reflects differences in the markets or Ms Kleypas’s role in the two markets. However, I have noticed that books mentioned on Dear Author often have a UK kindle edition when there is none for the USA. I have no idea why: the publishers differ but they are normally both subsidiaries of the same conglomerate.
Wow!! Have you ever hit a hot button with me on this one!!!! My reading has been completely been turned upside down because of the what those greedy publisher expect us to pay. I just did a post on it myself on how I refuse to pay such overinflated prices for ebooks. And since I read almost exclusively ebooks these days with a very rare exception, I’ve had to find alternate authors who have ebooks at reasonable prices. And I have found such gems that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. So that is a real unexpected bonus. It hurts like you wouldn’t believe though, to have had to leave some of my favourite authors – authors I’ve loved for years. I expect a $2 difference between the two – if a print book is say $10, I don’t mind paying $8 for the ebook – thought that’s more of a pie in the sky hope. For many books there may be a 50 cent difference – not enough for me to buy the book.
I think in Canada it’s worse. They may have settled the big dispute between Amazon and Hatchette south of the border but it hasn’t really trickled up here yet. I flat out refuse to pay the same or more for an ebook than the price they charge for a print book. There are only 3 authors that I will buy print copies as the ebooks are too expensive. Other than that *heavy sad sigh* I just don’t read them.
And another thing I find extremely annoying is when an author announces on Twitter that “Woohoo! Her book is selling for $1.99 on Amazon” and I’ll get all excited, hop on over there only to discover that because I live in Canada, there isn’t a reduced price and they are still charging $8.99
Before January 2008 I used to place monthly orders with Amazon for 5-10 books of mixed paperback /hardback. I simply don’t do that any more. Post Kindle I cannot recall a ebook that I paid $9.99 for.
I do buy a lot of audiobooks but I have a Audible account that gives me 24 credits at a time, so it works out to about $9.99 each download but I feel like I get a lot more with a book and a performance. However, I have noticed that I am getting very picky about choosing Audible books also. There are a lot of what I consider “junk” books showing up on Audible and fewer books by authors I want to read. I’m currently waiting for Phil Rickman’s new book to hit audible, a new time travel novel in the Chronicles of St. Mary’s by Jodi Taylor, and have preordered the next Foreigner book by C. J. Cherryh. I do like Whispersync and for the right book will buy the Kindle edition, the audible download and a hard copy, but that’s rare– four in the past year met my trifecta standards.
Meanwhile I blazed through the entire Dr. Siri series by Colin Cotterill on Scribn (audio) and the latest Adrian McKinty (Gun Street Girl) as well as some other books that I had been curious about but not so curious that I would use a credit (or even hard cash) on buying them. In most cases my hesitation was confirmed by experience.
I don’t think I would even pay $12.99 for C. J. Cherryh’s book in ebook form and she has been my favorite sff author for years and I’m pretty invested in this particular series although the last two have not been up to snuff.
So Yesterday I was in Walmart and saw two paperback books I had on my wish list. Kresley Cole (the Master) and the latest Julia Quinn novel. Both were $5.99 for the paperback off the shelf. I pulled out my trusty iphone and looked up the most current Amazon price. Both books in digital were $6.99!! No brainer I bought off the shelf. Seriously? Whats going on? Pricing is all over the place and sorry but I won’t pay more than $7 for a book either digital or paperback. Library time if its an author I really like or I just move on to another author I can “discover” . There are lots of indie authors out there writing great stories so I blow a raspberry at agency pricing at this point. Which is really too bad because I have a $100 monthly book budget but I expect value. The desire to squeeze an extra $3 or $4 out of me for a name author just prices it out of my reach even if I can afford it. Poor strategy on their part.
I think I spend more time these days trying to find a the book at a reasonable price than I do actually reading the damn book. $12.99 is a ridiculous price for an ebook. Even for an autobuy author I won’t pay that much – remembering that $12.99 USD is approximately $16.99 Australian dollars (OUCH!!) these days.
I did buy the latest Patricia Briggs, but only after extensive shopping around, and I wavered quite a bit about it. I want The Goblin Emperor which has dropped to about $9 on Google Aus but I haven’t pushed the button yet. Still weighing it up.
I can gloomily foresee a lot of cheap indies in my future and I’m not happy. Other than that, it will have to be waiting for those killer sales where whole series drop to about $2.99 a book (still not dirt cheap on conversion) or omnibus editions on sale.
Don’t get me started on the pricing for backlist books…
Readers complain but they pay the asked-for price on books they really want. Every bit of research shows that. People go to a hit Broadway show, they pay a higher ticket price than for a show no one has heard of. People spend huge $$$ to attend the top sporting events and concerts. Books are no different. If you want to read 99 cent ebooks, there are plenty to choose from. Just not necessarily the top authors whose work has a proven premium value. For publishers to discount those authors would be insane, also an insult to an author whose sales show his/her work is valued more highly than others.
So I see a lot of “for an ebook” statements. Are you (an in general you) any more comfortable with the $19.25 price for the hardcover (list price $25.99) that comes out at the same time? (on the Kleypas book)
For me being an ebook has nothing to do with it (a book’s a book). I’m just not willing to pay that much for a BOOK period most of the time any more. If I was a big enough fan I could see paying the $12.99 though. It’s about what I’d have to pay to go see a movie in the theater and I’m much more likely to get more and longer enjoyment out of the book (and hopeful re-read potential).
Most of the time though I know that the book will be available at the library or I can wait a year and it’ll drop to mass market prices and if I’m still interested I can grab it then. What publishers need to think about though is that I might not still care much in a year and may have moved on. I have a fair number of mystery authors I used to like where I stopped buying the hardcover or the ebook with a hardcover based price and just got out of the habit of following said author to the point where they kind of end up shuffled to the side in favor of other authors who’s books fit my price point at the time. While I still like those authors I’m now 2-4 books behind in many of their series at least in part due to release day price and the further behind I get the less likely I am to ever pick the author back up. I’ve had no problems finding plenty books I like in the $3-$8 range.
Good question. I’ve been curious too. Will you share what you discover?
Personally I read between 80 and 200 books a year, depending on my schedule. I used to buy all my books hard copy until the last 2-3 years. Now it’s mostly digital, and a combo of library and purchase (Google, Amazon, and Audible). If I can get the book at the library, I will. If I love it, I’ll buy it, and reread. If it’s free or cheap ($1-$2) I’ll buy it without thought. If it’s $3-$5, I check reviews, and but it if it looks good. If it’s more than $5, it has to be an author I completely love.
I will admit that I was a little taken back by the $12.99 price for the new Kleypas book, but I spend at least $10 for two hours or more entertainment at the movies and I don’t get to own that either. Like Janine, I have bought way too many books at $1.99 to $2.99 that I either didn’t like or will never read. The last few months I have become very selective in what I buy and as I result, I buy fewer books. I love my kindle because frankly my bookshelves are full.
@Deborah Smith: Oh yes, because all overpriced books are masterpieces and all books offered at 99c–often by their authors, who respect themselves plenty, thank you for the derisive judgement–are crap.
Not.
@Brian: This has been answered before. When I purchase a print copy–and I almost never buy a hardback, by the by–I own that copy. I can give it away. I can loan it, to a hundred people one after the other. I can take it with me to another country and read it, no problem. When OS and ebook formats die, I can still read that print copy, provided I still have my eyesight. I can have someone else read it to me out loud, or I can read it to someone else. And if I don’t plan on ever re-read it, I can give my print copy away, or sell it.
None of those hold true with an ebook.
With an ebook, particularly one priced at or above print price, I’m paying an exorbitant price for a license that can be revoked, on a product that can be rendered obsolete.
On top of that, the cost of printing, shipping, and storing print books far, far exceeds the cost of producing ebooks. It is not apples to apples, no matter what interested parties–see Ms Smith above you–may say.
I wonder if it makes a difference if you ‘used’ to buy hardcover genre fiction? I buy almost exclusively in e-format now, but ‘before’ I never ever bought a hardcover book unless it was non-fiction. I have long been taught by publishers that there is a premium on ‘latest release’ at $30-40 for hardback: so I get it from the library when it first comes out, buy it when it’s in paperback. Now, because I can get ‘latest releases’ the same day or only a few days later in e-format, I decide if I will accept the ‘get it now’ price; the $3-4 price between the release day price and the 6months/1year wait for the ‘paperback’ price. But this is only from top tier published authors that have to go through the hard/paper back structure.
Thanks for this blog entry and discussion! I’m so relieved I’m not alone!
I heard about the new Kleypas being available for pre-order and jumped on Amazon reading to one-click, only to see the SHOCKING sticker price! No way am I paying that for an e-book!
And I don’t care to hear that there are also costs to build into ebooks. There is no paper, ink, or transportation costs involved so there is no reason for an ebook to cost the same or more as its print version.
I own a ton of books in print from popular authors that I would happily buy in ebook format as well, but I won’t pay the same price as I paid for the print edition. So I wait until the ebook price is reasonable. NOTE: in almost all cases, I’m STILL waiting! Ugh
Deborah Smith: “Just not necessarily the top authors whose work has a proven premium value. For publishers to discount those authors would be insane, also an insult to an author whose sales show his/her work is valued more highly than others.”
I understand what you’re saying, but personally I don’t think price equates value. Or at the very least, everyone’s definition of value is different. There are some highly priced bestselling authors that I don’t read because I don’t like their work for various reasons. Also, many of those same high priced books eventually go on sale. Not to be nit picky, but does a price reduction over time from $12.99 to $4.99 or $1.99 (which does happen sometimes) mean the value of the work has somehow diminished? I know a lot of authors want to argue high prices because they feel that lower prices speaks badly of their work or because, like you suggested, they see it as some sort of insult to their work/art. I disagree with this argument. I value authors and their work, but I still refuse to pay $12.99+ for an ebook. $12.99+ feels like gouging to me.
I also don’t think books are comparable to concerts, Broadway plays, and major sporting events. For example, I am a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails. I would pay top dollar to see them (within my budget constraints), but why? Because seeing NIN in concert is a rare event. How many times will I be able to see Trent Reznor in my life time? The same can be said of hit Broadway plays. Some may have long runs, but eventually the curtain closes. Supply/Demand. Books, while no less valuable, are a different type of product. But I do agree that some people will pay asked-for prices for books they really want.
@azteclady: Guess I totally didn’t get what I was trying to say across. I was commenting on the price of both editions being in my mind too high, not yet another argument about why ebooks should cost less (which this one does). The ebook, which costs less to make available (although not as much less as some like to think) and has less rights/utility is also priced less by the publisher $12.99 instead of $25.99. I guess I was wondering what folks thought about the price in general. Are they willing to pay the high price of the hardcover just to get the extra utility that always gets thrown up when comparing pbook vs ebook prices (without mentioning potential benefits to the e-copy such as adjustable type size, less weight, storage)? I’m not as I very very rarely would take advantage of the ability to lend or re-sell the paper copy (I can lend my ebooks just fine to people I would lend to anyway by borrowing someone my old Kindle registered to my account). To me this just isn’t a book that would be worth the HC cost anymore that the eBook cost. It’s a book that fits more into the $8ish range as a new release to me.
Brian: “Are they willing to pay the high price of the hardcover just to get the extra utility that always gets thrown up when comparing pbook vs ebook prices (without mentioning potential benefits to the e-copy such as adjustable type size, less weight, storage)?”
No, I would absolutely not pay that price for a HC unless it was some sort of special/rare collector’s item that was meaningful to me (for example, I recently purchased, as a treat to myself w/ a gift card I received, the Sons of Anarchy collector’s edition book which was priced at $17.99). In fact, and speaking of value and to your point, an ebook is actually of more value to me based on the reasons you listed (less storage, less weight/more convenient, etc.) So those factors outweigh the fact that I can’t technically own the book. However, I still refuse to pay $12.99 for an ebook. Still feels like gouging to me.
There are a few, a very few series, that as soon as a release date is posted, I schedule a personal day off work to read it. So basically I’ll pay whatever they charge by that date. My boss has to wonder why I take that handful of Tuesday’s off each year with more than 6 months advance notice, but I think she’s afraid to ask. I buy those books with pre-order to get the price match guarantee, and that’s worked out well for me, but for those, I’d pay ridiculous prices for anyway because they are my vacations. Thinking about it, I’d probably actually pay the non-discounted hard cover price even for eBook format. There are a few other highly desirable but less obsessive books that I’ll pre-order at ridiculous prices just to see if there’ll be a price match drop I can cash in on, but those I’ll put a reminder in for the day before so I can cancel if necessary. Altogether there are probably only a maximum of 5 that I’d be willing to pay >$10 for. This would likely increase if release dates were not on Tuesday, but on Saturday as I have more time available. Once I have to wait 5 days for time to read, it’s really easy to wait a few more weeks to get a better price. But, I don’t go out, I don’t watch TV or movies, and I have no subscriptions. Buying books is the entirety of my entertainment budget. Everything else that I consider non essential gets an ereaderiq notification. I really should check back at my public and university libraries to see what’s happening on the digital lending front though, it just seems like a lot of work since you have to register for a library account in person. I’d rather use OpenLibrary.
I would never pay $12.99 for an ebook. I max out at $4 unless it is a box set, and for those, I don’t pay more than $5.
Let’s face it, you don’t own many ebooks. If there’s any DRM, you don’t. I love to get books at ARe that I can back up into my cloud storage so I have access to them. With Apple or Amazon all you’ve purchased is a license to the book that can be rescinded at any time. I bought a box set of Aurora Rose Reynolds books on iBooks. And now I can’t update it from iBooks at all. Whatever license arrangements were set up for that set don’t exist anymore. So when the device that box set is on dies, as tech does, I will lose those books. Period. Even though I purchased them.
So I buy in paper whenever I can. I can share that book, resell that book, donate that book to charity and get the tax write off. I can’t do that with ebooks.
Ebboks are wonderful, giving me a chance to discover independent authors and take a risk on a writer I may not know for a low cost or for free. And the ability to have thousands of books on one device is mind-boggling. But they do come at a price of guaranteed portability and guaranteed access. So to price them the same or higher than print just doesn’t make sense to me.
I have always thought that the businesses who produce entertainment have done nothing more effectively than to teach a lot of us to be patient. I’ve rarely bought books in hardcover or ebooks over $10.00, and I almost always wait for the movie to come out on video. I’ve learned to tune out the hype, since it’s unlikely I’ll be getting to that book or movie anytime soon. And, as many have mentioned, by the time the price comes down, there’s a good chance I don’t care anymore.
On the other hand, people aren’t rational, and there’s a difference between what people say they do, and what they actually do, (this isn’t aimed at the commenters; I’m guessing you’re a self-selecting group.) But publishers may be acting on actual buying patterns using data we don’t have.
But it is interesting to me that publishers do seem to overvalue certain kinds of books, possibly to their own detriment. Kind of like how movie companies seem to always want to have the very top-grossing movie, even if in the long run they might do better by making a greater variety of less-expensive, better-crafted films, even films with, say, women and minorities in the leads. (But that’s a whole different discussion…)
@Brian: I do apologize, as I did jump down your throat a bit too quickly.
The answer to the price question, in both cases, is “very rarely would I spend $12.95 on a print book.”
I have spent more than that on print books–last one was Meljean Brook’s The Kraken King and there were plenty of extenuating circumstances: I love the series to a ridiculous degree. The book was first published digitally as a serial half a year or so earlier, and by the time the print edition came out I was dying to read it (I don’t do serials, even free ones, let alone those you pay for–those six months were long, yo). Also, I have all the other novels in her Iron Seas series in print–because they’ll never be rendered unreadable by a shift in technology.
But I have spent that kind of money twice in twelve months. I read four to six novels a week–and my top price per book is a lot lower than what most people up-thread are quoting. My book budget, which is the sum total of my entertainment budget (no cable, Netflix, Hulu, eating out, traveling, etc) is ridiculously low. At almost thirteen dollars, I would be able to afford two books a month, tops.
Regarding the costs of ebooks, I’m sure there are plenty of hidden costs–from formatting to cover art, to editing, to promotion, paying each distributor a cut, etc. Interestingly, these are costs shared by the print book. Once all these are done and paid for the digital edition, they are pretty much done and paid for the print edition, and viceversa.
However, a lot of the traditional costs are not there for digital editions. Printing, storage, shipping or remands (unsold copies returned by bookstores) do not exist for digital books. There is virtually no limit to the number of copies of a file you can make, so there’s no need to have a bunch of them laying about waiting to be bought.
A quick example–review copies and giveaways. Back in the dark ages when all ARCs were print, only authors who the publisher thought were going to make the advance pretty quickly had ARCs of their books go out to reviewers, and the list of reviewers who got ARCs was pretty damn limited. Because ARCs were expensive to make, print and ship.
These days an ARC is basically an early digital version–and in some cases it’ss the final version minus copy and perhaps minus some front or back matter.
Back in the day (say, 2008), if an author wanted to do a giveaway to get word of her book out, she had to use her author copies (or buy copies), store them somewhere, and then pay to ship them out. Today, she hits send on a file however many times she wants/needs to, and still has copies to give.
The lending issue is a lot more complicated for me than for you–the person I would share these books with lives in a different country where DRM blocks access to most, if not all, of my library. (I’m sure the technologically savvy around here are going, “there are ways around that!” but neither of us is technologically savvy, in the least, so that doesn’t much help.) I can, however, buy used print copies by the bucketful (at 50c or so) whenever my library or used book store are doing a clean out sale, and mail a large box once a year, and sneak a few books to her whenever someone in the family is going that way. And no one on either side of the border wants to tax the print books either.
@azteclady: crud.
It should say, “in some cases it’s the final version minus cover”
Sorry about that.
I haven’t read fiction in paper since early 2009, I don’t particularly care what the paper or hardcover price is of any book. The most I have paid for an ebook since going digital is $9.99 plus tax but it has probably been 3-4 years that I’ve spent that much on a book. Once the price fixers did their thing, I found other books of interest to me at a more reasonable price and I’m still finding them. I also finally have a library where I live! It opened in November 2014 and I’ve been having fun exploring that option. There is one series published by a big 5 that I haven’t given up on yet but since the last two releases in the series are above my price limit, they have been borrowed rather than purchased. I spent the money saved there on other books.
I rarely buy backlist anymore unless it’s a new to me author that I’m excited about. There was one author that I had read in paper ten years ago and I thought my dad would like his work so I was buying one ebook a month for my dad. This author has been dead longer than I have been alive. Before agency pricing the books were $7-8 plus tax. When RH went agency the books doubled in prices. They have since dropped to the $11-12 range but they’re still too much when there are other choices for my dad. After all, he now has a local public library to explore too.
Reading has always been my primary form of entertainment so I haven’t made any cuts to my book budget despite a huge TBR folder and library usage, I’ve just changed which authors/publishers get my money.
@Deborah Smith:
I agree, but there are very few authors on my autobuy list that meet this criteria. These are books I know I will read at least three times, maybe more, so cost per read is reasonable. Publishers of unknown authors or second-tier authors are smoking dope if they think I’m going to pay more than $10 for a risky book. My $$ are limited, and I don’t go to broadway shows, sporting events, or concerts unless I am given tickets by friends who can’t use them.
The number of people who can attend live events is limited to the number of seats available. There is no limit to the number of ebooks that can be sold. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone to have lower prices and sell more books?
One of my brothers gave me a 1st Gen Kindle when they came out (I would have dithered for several more years if it hadn’t been a gift) and I haven’t looked back since then. 100% of my fiction reading is in ebook format. I still buy most of my non-fic in paper, but the ratio is slowly shifting.
I live an exciting life; my discretionary spending is devoted to books, tea, and weird nail polish. As a result, I’m pretty generous to myself with my book budget. That said, I’d have to think long and hard about spending >$10 on an ebook. It would have to be a book I’d been anticipating and absolutely had to read the instant it downloaded in the wee hours on a Tuesday morning. I wouldn’t do it for an unknown author/book or something I thought might languish around until I got to it.
I buy my ebooks rather than borrow them. And I buy a lot of books. I’ll never get them all read in my lifetime. And that’s ok.
I’ve gotten a lot better at delayed gratification than I used to be. These days, I’ll put something on my wish list for years waiting for a price drop. It’s not even the money that bothers me. (Or, at least, not mostly.) It’s more that I feel like high ebook prices are a personal affront. I like things to be “fair” and get very cranky and hold a grudge if I think I’m being treated unfairly. If an ebook is listed for the same price (or more) than the paper book, I won’t buy either. I’ll wait ’til there’s a bigger price difference before I click. If the ebook is more than the paper book, I take that as a big “screw you” from the publisher and say it right back by deleting the book from my wish list altogether. Janine mentioned the price drop for The Goblin Emperor so I scampered right over to Amazon with an itch in my clicker finger. Sadly, the ebook is the same price as the MMP, so still no sale. My finger relaxed. I’ll wait.
Other things that make me cranky? Shoddy ebooks with formatting errors, typos, missing content/artwork compared to the paper version, etc. And this includes crappy OCR copies of OOPs that no one bothered too proofread/correct.
On a positive note, I wanted to share the experience of another brother. He has dyslexia so he’s never been a big reader. I’m not sure that he read a single book in its entirety last year. Or even for several years for that matter. As a result, I was pretty surprised when he recently expressed an interest in getting a Kindle. What?!? But when Amazon had some Valentine’s Day sales, I decided to take a gamble and sent him both an ereader and a tablet. I figured that he could sell them or give them away if he didn’t end up liking them. Well, he’s keeping them both. He said his life is transformed. He’s reading ebooks or listening to audiobooks constantly. He texts me at all hours telling me what’s happening in his current book, asking what he should read next, etc. He just sent me an email that he’s read 16 books (!) since he got his package in the mail a couple of weeks ago. He joined Kindle Unlimited and has found a lot of books he’s interested in checking out. He’s on a limited budget, so this is a way for him to experiment relatively cheaply–since he’s a “new” reader, he’s trying to figure out what kind of books he even likes before he starts buying them individually. (And I sent him the link to Nate’s post about borrowing books from the library, so thanks to both Nate and Robin/Janet for that.) This makes me very happy.
@Susan:
That’s just incredible. As an aside, there’s a dyslexia font that I’m hearing good things from people I know. Depending on how tech savvy you are, there are apparantly ways to load your own fonts. Or we could all try contacting amazon.
@Erin Burns:
Whoops, forgot the link.
http://www.dyslexiefont.com
Over the last six months or so I have borrowed more books and eBooks from my local library simply because of the increase in the price of eBooks here in New Zealand. Due to publishing rights many of the books/eBooks available in New Zealand are from UK publishers. One example that comes to mind for me is Patricia Briggs. The eBook of Night Broken is listed on Kobo at NZ$19.99 (approx US$14). This is an overpriced UK edition and definitely outside of my price range. I’m only guessing that the price is that simply because it is based on the hardcover price. The eBook of Dead Heat is NZ$13.99 (approx US$10) and as far as I am concerned it is also over priced but probably based on the paperback price. The UK edition eBooks are always more expensive than the US editions – Kobo has both the UK and US editions of Cry Wolf available – the UK edition is NZ$14.99 while the US edition is NZ$8.69 – sadly both editions don’t come at the same time, the US edition is available much later than the UK edition. While I love reading Patricia Briggs, with prices like this from the UK publishers she is off of my auto-buy list and I will be reading her books through my local library from now on.
If a book is priced at over $10 or $20, it means has more value than a .99 cent one or even a $2.99 one? Premium value doesn’t make a “top author”.
BTW, Broadway plays are down in sale, and most don’t even last a year. Want to know why? The $125 ticket price.
Readers, like most customers, want a deal.
@ShellBell:
It sounds like you are really getting ripped off in New Zealand.
As the kindle price for “Night Broken” is the same – at current exchange rates – in both the UK and the USA (at $6, so a bit over NZ$8) the prices you quote are terrible. As Amazon does not seem to have a NZ store do they allow you to buy e-books and if so from where? It sounds like your cheapest source might be to spoof Amazon into thinking you are a USA resident?
@Erin Burns: Thanks for the link. I’ll share it with my brother today!
I think we may have purchased an ebook or two at that price, but not many. And most likely non-fiction. BUT that purchase means other authors lose sales. We buy a gift card on my husband’s kindle account (currently “residing” in the USA) and when that $100 is gone, well our book buying for the quarter is done. We don’t have any money on the account now, and we won’t be adding money anytime soon.
I do maintain an Australian kindle account for those books that are available here and not in the USA, or for the odd occasion they are cheaper, but the money is still limited. And the prices are just as bad. The $12.99 demanded for a Mary Stewart novel from the 50’s resulted in a ban on buying any Hachette books, in any format, for a few years. I suspect some snuck in (they have a lot of imprints) but it probably saved me a lot of money- even if I really wanted it, I would put it back when I spotted the Hachette name.
I don’t generally hold grudges, but apparently can do so when confronted with either too high e book prices OR geo blocking restrictions on ebooks.
We don’t have any over-the-air TV, either free or cable/satellite and I’ve always been a reader and buyer. My physical collection at one time exceeded 3,000. According to my Goodreads’ records, I read and review on average about 120 books a year, several of them as audiobooks (I have Audible and Downpour accounts but am moving away from Audible for the DRM-free world of Downpour.) Of that number perhaps 60% are history or biography, the balance in what I would call “literate mysteries”, e.g. Ross MacDonald, Dashiell Hammett, Stephen Greenleaf, Donna Leon and many of the European writers. On very rare occasions perhaps some SF.
I read now exclusively digital. I subscribe to Scribd (tried Oyster and didn’t like the software) and Kindle Unlimited. Kindle still has the best software ecosystem, but I have accounts with Kobo and Nook (never get anything from them anymore.) I have multiple devices on which I read including laptops, ereaders, tablets, and phone depending where I am. I use ereaderIQ constantly (my watch lists have over 500 books on them) to alert myself of books I want to read being digitized and for when books achieve a reasonable price point. That point varies, but only very rarely will I pay more than $10 for a digital book that, once read, simply resides in my library and can’t be sold or loaned. With some 4,000 books in my digital library now (including Scribd books I’ve marked to read) there is always something available to suit my eclectic needs at any given time. Most books that start out high get put on sale eventually and that’s when I get them. There’s nothing (well almost nothing) that screams it must be read “right now.”
As far as buying, I find that I now check Scribd availability before shelling out cash. My book budget hovers around $300/month. It’s amazing how much you can save when you don’t drink, smoke, or subscribe to cable. I suspect market forces will drive down the $12.99 pricing. We’ll see. In the meantime, plenty of wonderful stuff to read out there for less. My wife still buys mostly physical books so she can pass them along to the kids.
@Grace Elliot: The work may be “already done” on an e-book, but the publisher still needs to recover their investment in publishing the book, which depending on the publisher can involve any of the following: choosing which to publish, paying the author an advance, editing the text, designing the print and/or e-book, designing a cover, and marketing it.
On the point of deteriorating sales among indie authors: I think the novelty has worn off while the market has become overcrowded. In 2012 when I rediscovered my love for reading and the NA boom was at its peak, I was part of a group that frequented a board – discussing books almost 24/7. The discussion board remains but it’s virtually empty. I think people have moved on. Real life happened and some of those people in that group just used it as a springboard to find jobs in the indie world – by becoming an author themselves or by beta-reading or doing book covers. People are reading significantly less. Some of the more prominent bloggers in Goodreads before have disappeared. It doesn’t help that there are so many more authors out there that it’s very easy for new releases to be forgotten as new ones come along.
@Rach: I don’t disagree with the thrust of your comment, but it should be noted that some of the top reviewers on Goodreads left when GR was sold to amazon, and in response to the new(ish) rules there, that favor authors over readers.
Rach, I think you’ve nailed it (and azteclady’s comment also makes a whole lot of sense to me). It mirrors my own experience as a reader. We’re all going around with overflowing Kindles and huge TBR piles, and the excitement of being able to get ebooks for free or cheap has palled. As an author, reading what other authors are saying, it’s clear that the boom days are over and that those of us who still want to be in on the game are just going to have to settle in for the long haul. Book blogging and Goodreads aren’t quite what they were for all sorts of reasons.
I predict trad publishers are still going to keep their ebook prices above $9.99 for as long as they can, which gives us indies a chance to shine–but we really do have to shine, in terms of both quality of product AND professionalism.
If the Georgette Heyer backlist was reasonably priced, I would probably buy a few a month and replace my tatty old paperback copies. As it is, I will occasionally pick up one if it goes on sale for $3 to $4.
Add me to the list of those who found Vision in Silver e-books too pricy. I only have two or three authors that I will buy at that price point, especially since the local library gets her books promptly and I am usually first or second on the hold list. It is upstairs right now: I picked it up at the library this morning and burning a hole on the shelf because I have a busy day planned. I will wait until the prices come down before buying it.
I was pleased to see Dead Heat’s price was reasonable on pre-order. Briggs is almost an autobuy: it rather depends on how much disposable cash I have the week her books. Usually I put her books on hold but I rarely get in at the top of the list, so it is a race between a week when I am feeling flush and how quickly the library gets the book to me. We have an awesome library system, which makes buying decisions a lot easier at times.
@Elaine: On Heyer, her ebooks have gone on sale from time-to-time, so it’s worth monitoring. Be sure to check in August around the time of Heyer’s birthday, because I remember at least two years when Sourcebooks put her ebooks on sale in honor of her birthday.
I still buy a lot of ebooks but ever since Amazon started charging tax in Minnesota (since last October) I am definitely pickier about prices. A $2.99 ebook is now over three dollars, and if I buy a $5.99 ebook, I’m charged over six dollars which means I’ve been sticking to $0.99-2.99 at most. There haven’t been too many exceptions for me lately. Tax is oddly enough a killer on ebook deals.
If I want the latest book from one of my fav authors (like the DCI Banks Mysteries, Shetland series, Vera Series, Montalbano Series, etc. you see the pattern – British, Swedish, Italian…) I will pay it for kindle copy. If there is no kindle – I will buy paperback. Usually they are the same price. Usually they only have one version and the hardcopy running around at $100 and up. For routine Romance novels (which I also write), no. $5.99 is my current cap. If is really dependent on the QUALITY of the writing and your LOVE of the characters.
The market is saturated with new authors, which puzzles me as to the price hikes, basically negating supply and demand laws. I’m finding myself using the library more because many of the traditionally published books I want seem overpriced. Luckily for me, my public library has a vast online library for eBooks and audio books that are easily transferred to my iPad, phone, or Kindle. I don’t expect the prices to lower anytime soon, unfortunately, and I refuse to pay $10+ for an eBook that I can possibly lend once through Amazon, although I have paid $12 for an eBook before. I’m certain I must have paid that high price during a mid-life crisis. ;)
The print prices in Australia are outrageous – anywhere from $25 – $45 dollars for a new release hardback and around the $15 – $20 mark for a paperback so, for me, it still feels like a bit of a bargain to pay $10 for a long anticipated e-book! In saying that though, I have discovered a huge number of fantastic new authors in the $0-$4 range so I feel like there is enough balance in my spending. I only tend to pay the higher amount for something I really can’t live without. Mostly I’m happy to wait til the price hits around the $6-$7 mark.
I don’t think price is a great indication of the ‘value’ of the author’s work (and I’m only guessing here) but I have always assumed it’s more to do with how many other people are taking a cut? My favorite book of 2014 was an e-book only release that cost me $2.99. Win!
I read this column with interest. I started using my Nook in November, after having it for nearly 2 years. I now have 503 books, almost all by authors I had not read. My price break on ebooks is $5.00/$6.00. I think I’ve paid $4.99 a couple times. I receive BookBub everyday and use it to find authors that I’ve not read before. I’m thinking about Oyster next.
I still buy lots of books, but in bunches. I subscribe to RT now, and I reviewed three months and put together a list. I purchased $200.00 books, hardcover, paperback and trade size. There’s a local Maine store that I order books online from. I get the same discount as I do at Sam’s Club. They often have used books, and I’ll purchase those instead of new ones. They also offer points, and I use them on books to reduce the cost of some even more. I’m willing to wait now, where in the past the night the new Nora Roberts or Linda Howard, Mary Balogh arrived in store; I was in the bookstore buying the hardcover that night. I don’t do that anymore. Once Borders was gone, we were stuck with BAM and their poor service. I learned of BullMoose, what they offered and I’ve cut my weekly trips to 1 or 2 times a month, mostly for magazines, cards and small gifts.
I use the library too. Books that I think that I’d like to read, but not necessarily keep, I’ll borrow from the library. Our library is really good and has a good selection of books. They order books, or borrow them from other libraries too.
@Mike: Thanks for the suggestion Mike, but I’m probably one of the few people who choose not to purchase from Amazon. I have purchased a couple of books from Amazon.com previously and am pretty sure I can buy from Amazon’s Australian store as well but don’t. I prefer the epub format and can never seem to convert from kindle to epub properly so I don’t bother with Amazon. It may mean that I pay a little more for my eBooks and that I miss out on eBooks by those authors that are exclusively with Amazon but such is life. The library is a great way to save money and there are always plenty of new-to-me authors to try.
I think the key word for me is ‘own’ a book. When I buy a physical book I do own it, and all I need to read it is my own eyes. If I download a book it is dependent on a lot of tech factors that come between it and my eyes. As a Sydneysider a real estate analogy seems apt: buying a physical book is like purchasing a house; buying an ebook (for me at least) is like leasing a house. The lease only lasts as long as you can be bothered to update all your technology. Why make a beautiful thing so complicated?
What you own is a bunch of pieces of paper. When you buy a book, you never own the story. The author always owns it (or whoever she’s sold the copyright to). It’s seems like a small point, but that goes a long way to explain the difference between ebooks and paper books.
I don’t buy fiction in paper format any more. Admittedly, one of the reasons is because I have terrible eyesight (bad enough that laser surgery won’t cure it). So the ability to change the light settings and the print size is gold for me.
But I’ve also come to realise a few other things. My paper books that are decades old, are rotting, the paper is yellow and brittle, the glue is cracking and pages are falling out. The cheap mmpb’s definitely don’t last forever. They smell, too, I suspect because of the glue deteriorating. The colours on the front are badly faded, even though they don’t see full daylight very often. Maybe the dye naturally deteriorates, too.
When I buy an ebook, it’s clean, that is, it doesn’t have the germs a book carries. The page is fresh and unmarked every time. I can make notes, “share” them with Evernote or One Note, and open those same notes on my laptop an hour later. I can change the light, the print, hell, I can even change the font. The book looks like I want it to look, fitting my style of reading. I can read it on more than one device, and one of my devices, the Nook, has a battery that goes on and on and on.
I don’t buy books locked with DRM if I can avoid it (apart from review copies, and since I didn’t pay for those, that’s fair enough). I keep a master catalogue on my computer, and temporary copies on my tablet. They are my books as much as a paper book ever was.
And I have room on my shelves for the room boxes and doll’s houses that are my other pleasure! It just tickles me to have a twelfth scale bookshop tucked in between books of eighteenth century letters!
Actually, it’s my eyes that are the problem. I can’t read paper books too well (with glasses (which ones?), without, with extra light, or hold the page to my nose?) so that ereaders are a boon. I can adjust the print, the lighting, the font size, even the font itself if I want.
I don’t buy fiction in paperback any more. My old, treasured paper books are falling apart, the pages yellowed and brittle, the glue drying so that pages fall out, and the once bright colours on the front faded with age. The old “foiled” books seem to be doing the worst, for some reason. So mmpb’s don’t last forever, they too have a finite lifespan.
When you buy a paper book, what you’re buying is the paper. The story belongs to the author, or whoever she’s sold the copyright to. Whichever format you use, you are buying the right to read the book.
I don’t buy DRM’d books, so I don’t buy a lot of Amazon ones, and my preferred format is epub, so I tend to go elsewhere to buy.
Sorry, the comments appeared twice, and I don’t seem to be able to delete the extra one!
@Lynne Connolly: What you own is a bunch of pieces of paper. When you buy a book, you never own the story.
Actually, what U.S. readers own when they buy a print book is the vessel itself PLUS a bundle of legal rights granted by Congress (under the First Sale doctrine), which the Supreme Court has determined are not geographically restricted: http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/19/4123740/supreme-court-upholds-first-sale-rights-abroad
So the absence of these rights, combined with DRM and other format-based limitations, means that for many of us, the digital FORMAT is less valuable. Assuming we are paying at least in part for the format when we purchase a book, why should we pay more for a format that provides us with fewer rights?
@Lynne Connolly: When I buy a print book, in the US and several other countries, I’m covered by the first sale doctrine. That means that, when I buy a print book, I own the physical object–with the printed words on it.
Once I pay for it, that physical object–with all the pretty words inside–is mine. Not, it is not a license to read the pretty words. It’s outright ownership. I can sell that physical object–even the loose pages, if it falls apart. I can take it across borders and pay NO TAX on it, and give it to someone else who wants to read it.
While I very much enjoy the convenience of ebooks *for me* (because I live in the US, among other reasons), that doesn’t blind me to their many limitations and inconveniences.
But you can’t reproduce it. When I buy a book, I just want to read it, and maybe tell other people about it if I enjoyed it. But I do get your basic point, and agree with it. An ebook shouldn’t cost any more than the paper version. It’s not worth any more to me, as a reader. It’s the same story.
At one point it was suggested that people should be able to buy a print book and also get the ebook if they wanted it, or buy the ebook and also have the print book associated with it. A shame that idea doesn’t seem to be around any more. That might be worth paying extra for.
@Lynne Connolly: “At one point it was suggested that people should be able to buy a print book and also get the ebook if they wanted it, or buy the ebook and also have the print book associated with it. ”
Yeah, I never got this idea. Okay, there are maybe a few (very few) books I love so much that I want to own both the print copy (in case of a power outage, or to impress everybody who looks at my shelves with my good taste, or just to open and sniff the sweet scent of wood pulp and ink [I am not kidding, I actually do this]) AND a digital copy (so I can have immediate access to those magical words anywhere and at any time, in the text size and font of my choice) …
… but (like I said) very very few, and I probably own print copies (at least) of those already.
As for the other books, meh. I prefer print, because it suits my reading style (I’m a skipper and a final-chapter-firster) and because sometimes I want to just look at and fondle my pretty pretty books, but I’m cool with digital, especially when my eyes are tired and I just want a reading fix and the good Lord knows I don’t have any place to put any more books anyways.
Digital/print bundles take away the advantages of both, with very few benefits. And honestly, all you authors who are worried about your bottom line — are you really cool with all the readers who are immediately going to give away or sell the print copies they didn’t want?
With my reader hat on: I have been known to buy my top-tier favorite authors in both digital AND print. Because I am grateful to have enough income to be able to do so, and because I do like to support my favorite authors with my money, and because while I DO prefer to read in digital when I have the chance, I ALSO like to have the print copy around in case I want to read these folks when the power goes out.
(And given that my house loses power at least once a year, what with the storminess of the winter in the Pacific Northwest, this is kind of a legit concern. ;) Also, hey, when the zombie apocalypse gets here, I’ll be able to also read the print copies in between hunting down stocks of thyroid meds!)
With my writer hat on: heh, I operate on a small enough scale that ANY sales are a blessing and a gift, and what happens with a copy of my book one the reader buys it is up to them as far as I’m concerned!
Hi there. I am so shocked by the prices they dare to ask I typed in google ridiculous prices for ebooks and this site was one of the results.
The prices they dare to ask for something that is not even going to be your property is beyond me and I do not hear many people talking about it. No nagging.
My dad asked me to see if Andy McNabs’ new book State of Emergency was out. Yes it was but dad the price is 29.37 for the kindle version. (we live in Europe) . Then I did a search and discovered that in other shops they asked 13/14 dollars. Today I was looking for a book of Shanna Hogan. The Stranger she Loved. Guess what… 34.73 dollars they dare to ask!!!!!!! Has the world gone crazy. That is half of my weekly income. Now I wonder is it the publisher who decided the price? (have not read all comments)
@Marlene:
If you’re looking on amazon, if the price was set by the publisher, there’s usually a blurb. Here in the US there’s some insanity, like some pre-2000 Jayne Ann Krentz books selling for close to $20.
“Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
This price was set by the publisher”