I put up the post the other day about Night Shade Books offering ebooks of their titles for $6 each and Marco from Angry Robot Books pointed out that ebooks of their titles cost £3, a little factoid I wasn't aware of. Still, so far, so good - two publishers offering ebooks of their titles at a reduced price compared to their printed books. So, what about other publishers? I wanted to find out, so had a little look around...
First, a little disclaimer: I don't really read ebooks unless they're review copies. I don't buy them and the only device I have is my iPhone, and while good it isn't a dedicated ebook reader. I use Stanza to read some ebooks that I have, but that doesn't like to convert PDF files and keep the formatting. I usually give up and either read off my computer screen or, even worse, print bits off so I don't strain my eyes by looking at said screen too much.
Now, as per my disclaimer, I don't really know what the deal is with ebooks. I decided to do what any first time customer who wanted to buy and ebook would do - I went to Amazon. This, I realised, was a mistake of epic proportions. Amazon.co.uk don't do ebooks. Amazon.com do, but they only sell them for their kindle. I won't go there. Next I went to Waterstones.com - they do ebooks. I browsed away and came across a fair few titles I'd quite happily buy, but wanted to check a few things against what the publishers recommend on their sites. Here's a rundown of the final findings:
Tor UK - same price as paper books £6.99 to £18.99.
Angry Robot Books - all ebooks at £3.
Ace/Roc/Daw - same price as paper books $7.99 - $24.95.
Baen - $4 to $6. $15 for ARC's.
Night Shade Books - $6
Gollancz - same price as paper books £7.99 to £18.99
Orbit - around the same price as paper books, £7.99.
Now, before anyone says anything, I know this is by far a definitive list. Those who buy ebooks can jump in and tell me where the best places are to buy electronic copies, I'd certainly welcome it.
It's been discussed before (and apologies for not including links here), but ebooks priced the same as their printed counterparts just isn't something I'm interested in. Some publishers have the right idea and have reduced prices, but most of them don't. If I'm forking out cash for an expensive reader I don't want to have to pay the same price for an ebook as I would for a printed one.
I believe this is the cue for those in the know to inform me that the printing costs are actually very little when taken into account and therefore the prices should stay the same.
Sorry, but no. Just no. Although that could very well be the case it just doesn't work, at least not in the eyes of this book buyer. I love buying books because they look good on shelves, feel good in your hands and you can see where you're money has gone: the artwork, the paper, the binding - it all shows a physical value to me. eBooks don't have that physical value, and as such they should be cheaper.
I'm not saying that the price should be drastically reduced, although I do admire publishers like Angry Robot Books for their pricing structure. A cost of around £5 seems more than fair for paperbacks, and if publishers continue to publish ebooks along with hardbacks/trade paperbacks, they should be slightly less than the cheaper of the two - £10 seems about right for TPB books, while £15 for HB's is acceptable.
In all honesty I still doubt I would buy any ebooks until the format is completely standardised and all books come without Digital Rights Management. After all, when I buy a printed book the size is pretty standard across all publishers and there sure as hell ain;t anything that stops me lending it to a friend.
"Princeps" by L.E. Modesitt (Reviewed by Liviu Suciu)
7 minutes ago
4 comments:
I mentioned this on another blog, but if we pay more for the nice looking hardback and pay much less for the mmpb because we just want the story, why would the ebook be more than the mmpb when it's much less substantial? I can see making it at least the same price as the cheapest form of paperback, but why pay more? I won't.
I also just love books for the same reasons you mention them, Mark, so I'll read an ebook if I get an ARC, but that's about it.
On your last point, I can see that publishers are worried about books being offered for free if they don't have DRM, but that's happening anyway and like you said, I can lend my friend my paperbacks, etc, why not an ebook? Not to mention that it exposes more people to an author that would probably make them buy more books and help out the industry anyway.
Just my thoughts.
I've never purchased an eBook, but some of those prices seem high. I know Amazon wanted to keep theirs under $9.99 - which of course recently went by the wayside. But since the price of a book is set to recoup printing, shipping, and wholesaler costs, in addition to making a profit, why aren't eBooks cheaper since so much of that is not longer applicable?
And what's with Baen's ARCs being so much higher?
The ebook market is an absolute jungle of legalese and confusion right now, with the exception of a few companies like Baen/Webscriptions who make it all so easy. I have a Sony Reader, for which I've bought dozens and dozens of ebooks in the past few years. It's possible to get them relatively cheaply, but you have to shop around, and a lot of people understandably can't be bothered with that.
Fictionwise.com is one of the best stores out there. Unfortunately, the screws have been tightened regarding geographical restrictions and as a result most people outside the US can struggle to buy ebooks that aren't legally for sale in their own countries. And also, almost all those books (bar those from, say, Baen or Pan Macmillan's direct sales pages) have DRM. DRM means you're legally only really buying a temporary licence to read that book; if you try and transfer it to another device in the future, you probably won't be able to (I'll hold my hands up right now and say I used software tools to break the DRM on the ebooks I purchase. So does Charlie Stross, according to his blog).
So it's a minefield, basically. I love my Sony Reader, I love reading ebooks on it, but I couldn't recommend one of these devices to anyone until this whole tangle is sorted out. Right now I think people are being badly misrepresented about what they're getting and what they'll be able to purchase when they get one of these items - and yes, in many cases, the ebooks are wildly overpriced.
I should point out however that you can buy what are called 'multiformat' books from Fictionwise.com. These are books with no DRM and no geographical restrictions (to my knowledge), meaning you're getting pretty much the same deal as you get from Baen. Plus, they tend to be a lot cheaper than other ebooks as well.
I should add Fictionwise also sell subscriptions to e-editions of pretty much all the leading SF magazines in multiformat including F&SF, Asimov's, and Interzone. It works out a lot cheaper than subscribing to or buying the physical editions, and they don't wind up clogging your bookshelves. The site also has frequent sales, so sometimes it's possible to pick up a sub very, very cheaply indeed.
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