Er of course a digital book has to be digitally prepared - unless the content is purely text based with no chapters nor breaks then the book has to be formatted. Page numbers added (for reference), images scanned and resized and checked, chapter auto links included, formatting, then reformatting for different types of ebook format.

Not to mention the starting up costs on a book - not just your editing and writers fees, but also the advertising and marketing (the argument that ebooks don't need marketing is weak and applies only to those books that have already had large amounts of marketing spent on paper versions).

Not to mention book companies themselves not only have to consider their running costs, production costs and profit (yes you're allowed to make that) but also costs for future investments as well; profit from one book is where the money for the next several comes from (not just from one author but from many).

I know many like to see digital products and think that, because its digital, that the prodcution costs are far less; the truth is that the material costs of much of what we already use has already been stripped down to the bare bones through mass marketing and sales. So there isn't all that much left to skim down on.

I think ultimately a lot of the problems of 'digital worth' stem from things like the App Stores for mobile phone games (and in part the Indie bundles) - the 'worth' of something is being artificially devalued. People downrate games on app stores because they're $1.50 rather than 99c. Some people didn't want to pre-order the latest Indie Royale bundle because $3.99 for 4 games was 'too much to risk'. I've even seen some people complain that $5.99 is too much for some superb games on here simply because 'they're old'.

It's a strange situation, really. Things should be judged on their own merits and content. Going 'Space shooter 2 is overpriced because Garden sim 8 is cheaper' just doesn't make sense to me.

I'd personally be happy to pay equal (or even slightly above) physical costs for an ebook, if I weigh things up in terms of value, the downside of not having a physical copy is matched by the convenience of having it instantly, that I don't have to find a place in my already full bookcases for them, that the ebook device itself lets me carry round an entire library in my pocket. For that convenience, I'm happy to not worry that a digital copy costs $9.99 compared to $8-10.99 for the physical copy.

The problem is devaluing works for the big companies - they make such massive volume sales that they can stay afloat on significantly reduced profit per unit; heck as noted earlier in the thread they can even take no profit on select items in order to just boost sales in the direct product of in associated products.

Sometimes this works really well for both consumer and product; but I've a feeling that long term it harms the industry because it forces the smaller time company or individual into either having to be a subsidiary of a larger company to make the volume sales (by which point a limited number of large companies control what does and does not make it into the market) or they are left with the option of pushing out a higher priced and very limited market item which might just stay afloat, but is much harder to maintain in the market.

In the imortal words of Nelson... "EU, Ha haa"

Interestingly, I ran this by my friend who works for an actual book publisher - biggest one in the region - and he laughed and said "Wow, what a load of nonsense". He said they didn't even mention half the real costs that come JUST from physical copies of books and all the advantages of digital copies - his company has been selling eMagazine subscriptions on Zinio for a while now at massive discounts and they're looking for a digital service for books too now.

He said they often run a promotion for one of their magazines where you can cut out a coupon and get a book at cost price, as in: the actual price it costs the publisher to get the book printed and distributed to book stores And guess guess guess that cost? €5 or $7 for a soft back. €8 or $10 for hardback with higher grade paper (soft back usually uses more course grain paper).

Not only is that way lower than what they actually charge for an eBook, he said the production costs and logistics (distribution included) are the majority of that so thet net cost would be even lower. Big surprise ... just confirms what I knew to be true from where I work (we don't print many books but we have in the past and we print other materials that need similar logistics).

He also said that physical books have many many extra costs - most publishers that work with big chains, have a pulping deal: unsold books get their covers torn off and returned to the publisher to get pulped - then these chains get a refund. Not only that, but the publisher has to pay for collecting the books again as well. About 30% of the books they print, ends up getting pulped and the paper used for newspapers. They recover some of it as base material that way, but it still ends up costing them quite a bit which they add in their total cost calculation. Next to that, there's recall costs due to lawsuits, serious misprints, production errors, etc. Also: storage costs for stock, loss from sales due to stores running out of stock, etc. etc. etc.

He said that fixed costs for a regular book that's on sale for longer than a few years is negligible because publishers basically write off those costs during the initial years after release - after that, the book price drops a few quid so this proves it's not more than a few quid anyway. Then all that is left, is copy right fees and cover art fees which SHOULD be the bulk of an eBook price anyway.

Everything combined, and I agree: they're just no way those numbers are correct.

One thing you were right: it's cheaper to print than I thought. $3-4 it seems because they use very cheap paper.

Well, we can do the "I know someone" thing until the cows come home, I know someone involved in copywriting for one of the big five, and he agrees that for a print run for new works, the "other" costs that ebooks would still encounter should still be a much larger percentage than any costs associated with a purely physical distribution for something mass-market.

I think the real truth just lies somewhere in the middle. Something that flies off the shelves in the millions will run at a lower per-unit physical cost than something that sits there not selling for ages. So the argument there should of course be that the longer the term, the more the physical costs would increase over ebooks. But then again, older ebooks also dramatically reduce in price - My experience is that they tend to hover around the $5 mark, if not lower.

I'm still for doing away with the ridiculous agency pricing model (after all, it should be up to the retailer, and RRP should be just that - recommended), but for the most part they're not doing too badly with the pricing model as it stands at the moment. They've had a few mess-ups (like putting the new Steven King novel up for nearly $25 on release - it's now been brought down to a much more sensible $15), but on the whole the pricing is...tolerable, if not fantastic.

It's not enough for me to boycott releases or consider pirating as protest, anyway.


EDIT: One stupid thing about the agency pricing is that they fix the price, but assign it an RRP anyway, so it looks like they're actually 'generously' discounting books. Like the aforementioned Steven King novel allegedly has an RRP for $35, so at $15 it's supposedly a "57% saving".

To really put it in a few words: the article(s) is still fluffing the truth badly - they're simply trying to increase their profit margin from what I can see. It's true - the publishing industry hasn't been doing too well so maybe they see ebooks as their way of making some profit again. The problem is, that ebooks are extremely easy to copy so unless they drop the price to a more realistic number for something digital, people are just going to pirate it and have an identical experience. Separate from all the costs, it's still a dumb move on their part.

Example:

I wanted to buy the Discworld novels from Terry Pratchett for my Sony PRS-505. Price is $12.5 (with taxes). If I were to buy the physical book, brand new, I would pay: $7:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Magic-First-Discworld-Novel/dp/0552124753/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323302862&sr=8-1

No matter how you turn it, this is just ridiculous. I can show you a million examples like this one and the price difference is often 50+%.

USA appears to have a bigger price difference than the UK here its £4.50 for the paperback or £4.32 for the kindle on amazon for the same book (that is Colour of Magic). And honestly I see a similar pattern, nothing like the 50% differences that the USA is reporting. However I've also got to ask if that $4 version is, by any chance an older print. It's not uncommon for old products to get big discounts just because they are the end of a product line/stock supply and thus to show a much reduced price compared to if the book was from a new print run.

I'm not too convinced, with the Amazon store (by far the largest ebook outlet, I think it came out a while back that they have close to a 70% market share) the vast majority of books are equal to, or slightly less than, the paper version. Exceptions do come, obviously, mostly when the paperback has been around for decades but it's brand new to ebook (though sometimes this isn't the case either - the Aubrey/Maturin series were released in ebook format two days ago, the kindle edition is $9.88, paperback $11.16).

Just clicking on a few at random from the current book charts - Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell, ebook $14.99, hardback $15:97. Hunger Games, $4.69 ebook, $5.25 paperback. The previously mentioned 11/22/63 by Steven King, $14.99 kindle, $19.24 hardback. The Drop by Michael Connelly, $14.99 Kindle, $14.71 hardcover.


HOWEVER

Because of the agency pricing models you can't really 'shop around' for the best price like you can do for paperbacks. You also can't buy them second-hand or anything like that (though you can rent a large selection for free from libraries in the US, and you can rent quite a few directly through Amazon for no cost with a Prime account). But again, to me the benefits of instant delivery and not having to make room on my bookshelves outweigh the cons. Your mileage may vary.

Also, the book you linked to is on the UK Kindle store for £4.32, cheaper than the paperback for £4.55. Not particularly relevant to you with a Sony Reader, granted, but Amazon are rumoured to be changing to ePub format soon, opening it up for reading on other eInk devices.


As an edit to this, it is sort of possible to shop around one way, by buying from different regions. For instance, the Settlers of Catan book, new to digital formats, was $7.99 on Amazon US, but only 99p on Amazon UK.

Doesn't this require that you use multiple amazon accounts or missrepresent your registered country on your amazon account? Far as I know Amazon does not directly enable you to buy from their US store if you're in the UK (in fact most times it just auto directs you to the UK store).
A great pain as the US store has a lot more books in its ebook portfolio than the UK does.

Just add a US address to your account and you can switch inbetween without problems, the .co.uk and .com stores use the same account information, including billing. I regularly bought off the US store when I still lived in the UK, and now I've moved to the US I regularly buy off the UK store.

Your Kindle can only be linked to one region at a time, so you just switch regions, buy your book, switch back. This was actually a method recommended to me by Amazon when I queried availability of something.

Amazon really don't care about the EU though - no Kindle Fire, no app store, no video streaming, no ebook rental...all to do with harsher licensing issues, allegedly.

I don't know if its harsher or just the fact that they've got to deal with multiple different countries whilst viewing the EU as a single market as compared to the US (which is a massive market with mostly single laws - far as I know its only local tax laws that differ).

Also interesting that Amazon directly recommended that you shift your registered account location - out of interest had you suggested to them that you had/owned an alternate property in the USA? Cause for the average person they won't own an address or any such item (so it falls down to fake/random addresses). Just sounds odd for a company like Amazon to promote to its users to use fake personal information on their service.

I don't remember, to be honest. I asked about availability and they said it was available on the .com store and to use a US address to change my Kindle location. I am in the position of having a valid UK and US address and bank accounts for both though, so dunno. I have known plenty of people do it with a fake address with no problems though - the Kindle region change still uses your default billing address on the account, it just needs a US/UK address to switch regions.

Hmmm I'll give them a try asking with regard to getting hold of books on their .com whilst on their .co.uk site. Be interesting to see if they directly recommend the method you suggest - it would seem like a loophole in their service, but if its just a technical one on their part its silly - if its legal based it might mean that regular "location" hoppers might come under flask at some point in the future.

As long as my Tax dollars are used to subsidize them through copyrights, they better not complain about regulations. They can always choose to stop using our tax dollars to protect their work and give them a monopoly.

In a free market we wouldn't have thing like copyrights , and all the other ways protect big business.