Ebook Retailers

While I have no problem paying about $25 for a new hardcover book, but why do online retailers think I will ?

pay that for a new Ebook? If you wait a year it drops down to the paperback price, but it hasn’t changed at all. At least a hardcover book has substance to cover the price and I can understand the full price cause it costs them money to actually print the book.
Why don’t they charge like $5-8 for the electronic version, which doesn’t cost them extra to let you download? (processing fees don’t count cause they would be the same if the book were new or old)
Yes, I was objecting, but that is because I don’t know much about publishing and couldn’t figure out why you would pay the same price for two different objects. It just seemed like they were trying to take advantage of the book being new. Your answer clarified it for me.

I can answer the question, but I don’t think I can satisfy you because I suspect that you’re not really asking for information: you’re objecting.

Every sale of an on-line book means a hardcover book not sold. From the point of view of the publisher, the issue is how many times the content can be sold. Unless the book is in public domain or a special contract has been written–something a big name order will not accept, the royalty arrangement with the author is based on the number of copies of his text purveyed, irrespective of what format the book is in.

Moreover, the cost of setting up the text in downloadable format and the controls and arrangements for the distribution on the net are roughly equivalent to producing PDF files for the printed book. The up front costs are almost the same. The delivery and distribution is not as expensive, true, but the market is smaller at the present for downloadable books, so that the revenue per book is smaller.

If the market keeps squeezing the publishers, distributors and middlemen out of the system, the willingness of companies to publish literature (literature of any kind) will diminish. To some extent it has been already affected.

There is some value to timeliness. I suspect that after the paperback is out, the market has largely been exhausted for those who want the book immediately, so the number of sales gained by dropping the price of the on-line version would be minimal. It wouldn’t be increased by having a lower cost immediately either.

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