eBooks pricing model needs revisiting…
I’ve been a fan of electronic books now for a few years. I bought my first Kindle about three years ago, then traded it for an iPad as soon as it came out. Yes, I know the tired arguments back and forth about the ebook readers versus the iPad, but the bottom line is that I am much more likely to be reading in bed in a dark room than I am to be sitting on a beach with my ebook, so the backlit screen of the iPad is much more useful to me than the non-reflective kindle. Plus, I really have a hard time getting my head around the small kindle, having only owned the larger DX and like like the size of the print/page on the iPad. That said, I do primarily use the Kindle reader on the iPad, so Amazon gets my ebook money regardless.
Now, that said, while I do like the eBook format, there is one thing that kind of makes me scratch my head. Pricing of older books seems to be out of touch with market realities. Case in point – I’m a big fan of Vince Flynn’s novels. Mitch Rapp is the badass that I wish I could be and the detail is good enough to hold my interest – much like Tom Clancy used to be in his heyday before he got fat, rich, and lazy and started farming out his name for lesser writers to use. I’ve read most of the later ones and have now started to go back to the earlier ones. The main reason that I did not do the early ones first was because up until recently, most of my “reading” had been in the form of Audible audio books and the earlier novels were not yet available in their unabridged versions from Audible.
I’m currently reading Transfer of Power – Flynn’s second book and the first one featuring his seminal Mitch Rapp character. For some reason that I don’t quite recall, I have both the Kindle and the Audible editions. It’s actually kind of a neat pairing – I can listen to the story while driving in the car and then switch over to the printed version when I’m reading in bed. I’d love to do this on a regular basis, but it would require me to purchase the book twice; once in Kindle form and once in Audible and that would work out to about $30 a book – a bit too much for my taste. Anyway, I recently decided to make Flynn’s first book, Term Limits my next read. While it is available on Audible, I do like the ability to read in bed, so I decided to purchase this one in a printed form rather than through Audible. It was here that I hit the snag that launched this blog entry.
About a year or so ago, the publishers started to play hardball with Amazon. In the past, Amazon set the pricing for ebooks and as Amazon was really the only real game in town (sorry Sony and Barnes & Noble), the publishers had little recourse if they wanted to sell ebook versions of their library. With the launch of the iPad and iBooks, the publishers saw the opportunity to take back control of the pricing model and as a result, they get to set the prices for eBook editions. I was all set to purchase the Kindle edition of Term Limits, but the publishers want $9.99 for that version (the B&N nook edition is the same price). Seriously? This book was first published in 1998 – 13 years ago. You can buy the paperback version new for $9.99 and that has to cost more to produce than the electronic one. Furthermore – you can even buy a used version for less than $5 and Amazon even offers some of these with their Amazon Prime shipping. Sure, I need to wait an extra day or two to get it, but it’s half the cost of the electronic version. Plus, once I finish it, I can always resell it or give it to a friend or the local library – both options that are not available with a Kindle edition.
The point here is that Simon & Schuster loses on this one. If they had the Kindle edition for roughly the same price, I would have purchased it and they would be $5 richer. Instead, I get to read the book, Amazon gets their cut, and I pay half of what I would have paid for the ebook version. Bottom line here is that the publishers need to pull their heads out of their fannies and realize that sites such as Amazon along with the Brick and Mortar used book stores are going to make money selling used paper versions of the books unless those publishers get smart about pricing for older books. Sure – ebooks make a good value when purchasing the newest releases, but for older titles, the old fashioned dead tree versions are going to be the real winners until something changes.
Apple, eBook, iBooks, iPad, Kindle, Nook, Term Limits, Transfer of Power, Vince Flynn