Prices of e-books too low

There was a lot of talk on the net this week about the price of e-books. One prominent author wrote in her column that she thought the price of e-books was too low and that the low price was ghettoising the industry. A number of e-publishers and authors disagreed with her. In a nut shell, their opinion was that p-books were overpriced because of their inefficient and out-dated production and distribution methods; that e-books needed to be inexpensive in order to get into the market; that some e-books, like RocketBook editions were overpriced because the distributor and the bookseller wanted too much money; that the "NYC Giants" didn't want to put out inexpensive electronic editions of their p-books because they didn't want to hurt their sales. All good observations.

As I mentioned, these were the views of publishers and authors. As an ex-booksellers, I have my own opinion on the pricing of e-books - the price is too low. It doesn't matter what the cost of production of a book is or whether it is in paper or pixels, the price must be enough that all the parties involved, author, publisher, distributor, and bookseller make enough money on its sale that they have a reason to sell it. As a rule of thumb, I have always thought that the price of an e-book should be in the same area as the price of a paperback edition of the book. These days that's around eight or nine dollars.

E-publishers and authors claim the bookstore and distributor should take less because there is no physical book to ship or take up space in the store. Maybe so but bookstores exist to make money and they have overheads and salaries and other expenses that must be provided for through the sale of their books. Expecting them to accept less profit for selling an e-book will only discourage them from selling e-books. Bookstores may not be the ideal place to sell e-books but for now it is the best place to sell them. Customers looking for books, be they electronic or paper, go to bookstores for them. Therefore if you want to sell your book you must get it into a bookstore, until such time comes that bookstores are no longer required to sell an electronic book - and bookstores expect to get at least a 40% discount. They may not make 40%, because they must compete with other stores but they need to start at 40%.

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