On the Economics of e-Books?

way0utwest asks: "I was searching on Amazon today for Lawrence Lessig's 'The Future of Ideas'. While browsing, I noticed that there was also an e-book version of the same title. What was amazing was that the hardcover copy of the book is $21 and the e-book, which is downloaded, is $24! Now I may be just a simple computer programmer, but it seems to me that there is less overall 'cost' involved with the e-book and it should be cheaper. There's very little 'inventory' to store (how much disk space and electricity cost can there be?). There's no risk of having to 'return' the book to the publisher. There's no labor needed to 'ship' me the book. How can it cost more? Is Adobe charging that much for the licensing of the e-book? Now I'm not sold on the idea of e-books, or electronic books in general (though I am looking forward to electronic paper), however it seems that either the industry is not interested in pushing e-books, or Amazon is not really paying attention (though the list price of the hardcover is $30) OR the publishers are trying to overcharge for the e-book to make up for potential piracy. Am I way off base? Is there anther explanation? Anyone?" It's frustrating to find digital media that is priced higher than the corresponding title in dead-tree form. way0utwest makes a good point in that one reason for the increased pricing is due to piracy, but one has to wonder how often e-Books get pirated? Are such prices justified or are eBooks doomed to failure because they have effectively priced themselves out of the market?

Comments

Because someone will pay for it

[PeterClark]

Yeah, it's outrageous. But think of it like computer software. Infinitely reproducible with no added cost except for electricity and perhaps medium, yet you still pay $5,000 per cpu. They charge that much because they think they can get that much. It's basic economics. Most people, given a choice between ebooks and dead tree books, choose the later. Why? There's probably a whole lot of reasons, but I like the physical connection, the ability to rapidly slip through the pages for something that strikes my fancy, the knowledge that with good care, it will last longer than me, and that I don't need an expensive piece of hardware that hurts my eyes just to read it.

That said, there is someone out there who will say, "I'd much rather have it in electronic form, and I'm willing to shell out the extra bucks for it." They've already shown their willingness to shell out a whole lot of bucks for the reader, so what's a couple extra? Having already purchased a questionably useful device, they would feel stupid for not using it (especially after spending so much); they feel compelled to justify their purchase, and if that means having to pay a little more than a dead tree book, well, so be it.

Also, the first law of capitalism applies here. In a nutshell: people are stupid, and successful companies exploit stupid people.

:Peter

eBook piracy, etc

[Anonymous Coward]

to be blunt... eBook piracy is widespread, I've been to websites listing *hundreds* of titles available for download, organized by author and subject matter; both fiction and non-fiction.

however, before eBooks were this popular, similar methods unearthed 'digital' copies of the books - many titles are nowadays proofed, and transported between editors, in electronic form making 'leaks' from this media as easy and common as being able to get the latest MS windows finals before the official release dates.

Rocket science

[Graymalkin]

I'm sorry to burst the collective slashdot bubble but the price of books is NOT entirely dependent on the cost of the medium. The actual physical putting of ink on paper and binding and all that jazz is about 17% of the net amount received from a particular publication. In a business you've got alot of costs before you get to the profit. There's the cost of goods which in the case of a book includes editorial and production costs (books need spell checking, formatting, proof reading, ect), design work needs to be done, and then finally the pesky cost of paying the author for their work. Then comes cost of sales which covers advertising and promotion which suprisingly can be fairly expensive for some books (think about all the cardboard displays you see when a novel comes out from a popular writer those aren't free). Then finally overhead which includes the actual cost of operating a business. Then FINALLY you get to profit but then it is still tricky. When you talk percentages you're talking the net of what you actually make off a product, not the list price. If a particular book sells a thousand copies little to no profit is made. Reducing the cost of goods price by making a book electronic saves you a couple bucks but not so much than you can wipe your ass with a hundred dollar bill. Getting the same content on a different medium doesn't make the cost of that content go down. Suprise suprise this is how most content producers do business whether they print books, CDs, or DVDs.