I think the main answer to “Why aren’t ebooks cheaper?” is that the publishing industry refuses to pass along any savings to the customer, as margins are (reportedly) so thin anyway, and they saw what the digital market did to the music industry.
I also was just waiting for an ebook version of a new book to come out. The print book came out August 17th, and the ebook just came out around December 30th. I talked to the publisher via Twitter, and they said that they were “still working on” the ebook in the early part of December.
Now, to me, it would seem like (as someone said earlier) by the time the print book is done, isn’t the ebook nearly done by default? But apparently, the answer is no. However, this could be because the book publishing industry is ass-backward when it comes to technology, and many publishers still function the way they did in 1989.
I regularly see print books for sale cheaper than ebooks, and have just grown to accept that this is the way of the world at this point.
If you want to see really wild pricing, look at the price of audiobooks on MP3. They’re regularly like $50-70. IIRC, a few years ago I checked the Harry Potter series on CD and it was something like $300, but the same books were available via Audible or whatever for less than $20/book. I have no idea what’s behind that.
Oh, I see. I was t suggesting that people were necessarily buying the same books in multiple formats. Just that customers for one type of book clearly overlaps with another; it isn’t as if the bulk of all readers use just one medium. (In fact, you can be pretty sure at least a third or so of all readers consume multiple formats, at least assuming the survey is broadly applicable).
Actual publicatin, i any format, is only a TINY percentage of the cost of a book. Most boks are paid for on authro advnaces. I can’t find the reference but I know that it was only a small eprcentage of books actually recover their advances to go on to make money. Thera are costs of marketing, advertising and editing and one can argue that editing for print vs e-book are somewhat different beasts. Very little of the cost of a book is in the printing or publication or formatting for ebook format.
I[m in the 2/3 that doe snto fit that. I have exactly ! audio book, nad it was given to me and I’ve never maanged to even listen to it. I buy all digital books unless the book in question is only available inpaper then I buy that. I can’t understand or comprehend anything that I listen to unless I do nothing but that and take copious notes at the same time.
Most folks I know of that listen to audo books can do that and do other things at the same time. Or they never take notes on what they read.
That’s what I was assuming as well. Book production isn’t cheap by any standards, but if you’re already holding a printed copy of a book - especially in the digital age - it’s not like making an eBook drives up costs significantly. I would think the legal team would have as much or more work hammering out licensing / royalties than the actual publishing folks.
That’s me, for many books. I listen to a lot of stuff, and the stuff that’s more info-dense I’ll either listen to with a notepad in hand, or use a regular book.
My girlfriend uses audiobooks while reading the print book. She says having both things going at the same time helps her with comprehension. Although it does occasionally cause issues when the audiobook narrator goes off-script or decides that the audio version needs to be different for some reason.
