Ebook Pricing Complaints

Cluster focuses on complaints that ebooks are priced similarly or higher than physical books despite lower production and distribution costs, with debates on publisher strategies, piracy, and optimal pricing for sales.

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Keywords

ycombinator.com US HN i.e ebook ebooks book books price cost kindle physical expensive print

Sample Comments

pbhjpbhj Jun 30, 2019 View on HN

Discounted? Ebooks cost more than paperbacks in many cases.

gamblor956 Nov 17, 2022 View on HN

Most of the cost of a book is not the physical pulp or ink that went into making the book, it is in the editing, typesetting, and marketing that went into making the book ready for sale, so ebooks generally should not be much cheaper than physical books.

jsz0 Sep 28, 2010 View on HN

I think the publishers are probably factoring in the effects of piracy. In the past they couldn't stop people from lending/sharing printed books but they could stop mass produced counterfeit printings. Now it's the exact opposite. They can't control the digital counterfeits in the form of piracy but they can stop digital lending/sharing. Maybe they hope to break even in the end. I can see from their perspective that having both sources of lost revenue combined is a nightmare scenario. I think as

juice_bus Jun 16, 2024 View on HN

The ebook is $4.99 more expensive than the physical copy - wild.

rsl7 Jan 17, 2011 View on HN

It's bullshit when the ebook is more expensive than the paperback book.

DavidHaerer Oct 31, 2024 View on HN

btw it cost 10$ for an epub that is about 300 pages in print

rayalez Oct 24, 2016 View on HN

Things cost as much as people are willing to pay for them.If I'm willimg to pay $5/$20/$50 for an ebook, it should be irrelevant how much it costs to distribute it.It has information in it and if I want this information I will give author the money.He may have determined his price by considering the distribution costs, or how much he wants to make per hour, or based on how much he thinks people will buy it for, or he may have simply pulled it out of his butt.If I'

zerr Sep 26, 2024 View on HN

Ebook pricing is broken. Sell it for $0.99 and you'll get buyers. You can't sell ebooks when it costs only 5-10% less than a dead-tree hardcover variant. People don't like being ripped off.

vijayr Apr 20, 2012 View on HN

This is a nice summary.Just out of curiosity - why do ebooks cost so much? (I am talking in general, not with respect to this particular book). Of course, the value of the content is high etc etc - but wouldn't pricing ebooks less make more people buy them? A $30 ebook is much more expensive, especially if you are not in US/Europe (if you are in Asia, Africa etc), than a $9 ebook, wouldn't the volume make up for the lost dollars? Again, I am not talking about big name publishers, they have

pg_bot Oct 17, 2011 View on HN

Why is your ebook more expensive than the print version on Amazon? (Amazon is $10 cheaper)