I buy lot of books on Kindle, and I've noticed over the past month or two that most Kindle books (the ones that aren't the old freebie-ish 'classics') are now nearly as expensive as buying the print versions. Anybody know why? I'm seeing lots where the paper book price is around £17, and the Kindle price is £14. That kind of difference. I've been rejecting books just to try them out, because the price is too high ...on Kindle. I never did that before.
I could be wrong, but I believe that it is all to do with the supply of electrons. Supply and demand, you see. There are a finite number of electrons in the universe, and demand has gone up so the price has gone up. Either that or profiteering by Amazon as more people are sitting at home reading? I was shocked recently, not just by the price but by willingness to pay it - I had a "windfall" of £44 so I went and purchased every single "Jeeves" omnibus... which came to £45. Oh well, I ended the day just one pound poorer, but immensely richer in terms of my private library.
Most likely this, but I wouldn't call it profiteering, but savvy business practice. The idea of supply and demand works the same on the Web as elsewhere, and the money to cover the 'free' shipping on that three-hundred pound recliner has to come from somewhere.
It isn't just this year, cause last year I started seeing quite a few jump up into the 10-15$ dollar range. I think people are thinking that a digital copy and a real copy are the same price (or something like that). The ones I did get are much older (author's are probably dead/are dead, and their books are practically given away at .99 a novel. I say it's new authors on the indie scene making what the trad pubbed authors are making. So, I don't think it has anything to do with it being this year and all, and more to do with people willing to pay whatever the author feels like charging for a given book.
I haven't noticed this but I'm reading only fairly current indie published material with my Kindle account. I have realized traditionally published ebooks are far more expensive, the bigger name publishers being the most expensive.
Big 5 Trad have always had an unrealistic expectation about Ebook prices - I think its because they sell mostly print and don't care whether they make ebook sales or not - self poublishers make 90% of their money on ebooks so tend to price more competively
Quarantine quarantine quarantine. Everything is more expensive. Every business model is in flux. Everyone is scared shitless about the future of production. Everyone who had a five year plan for anything is rapidly revising their timeline. That might all be a bunch of hooey, but I blame everything on the quarantine.
Funny. I've been reading Jeeves just now ...on compilation 3. It's such nonsense, totally formulaic, not PC, but somehow addictive and fun.
I was just wondering if Amazon had changed their price structure in some way. I wonder how much of the increased price is going to Amazon, and how much is going to the author. My husband and I got rid of 22 50kg boxes of books a couple of years ago by donating them to Better World Books. If I weren't so wary of building the pile back up again, I'd be tempted to just pay a couple extra pounds to get the paper version. Maybe Amazon has now got folks over a barrel. You want to ePublish, or read on Kindle, you need 'us.' And that's going to cost you.... Yeah, I know there are other platforms out there, but most people use Kindle, don't they? Both for reading and for self-pubbing. (And for traditional pubbing as well ...the price increase seems to affect both.)
Not that it answers your question but I noticed a similar price increase for traditionally printed books. In the past if I wanted a particular book I was confident I'd find it on amazon for next to nothing - most of the time I was just paying for postage on the market sellers section. But the days of £0:01 books seems to be gone now.
I don't mind paying a reasonable price ...say a book that sells in the print version for £15 and the kindle version selling for £3 or £4. But now the £15 book is selling for £12.50, or something like that on Kindle. I don't think you're getting your money's worth, tbh. The thing that's bad is this sudden hike is putting me off buying the book, unless I'm pretty sure I'll like it. I used to take a chance on a book that seemed interesting, but I wasn't sure. Now I just pass it by.
In a lot of places, physical bookstores can't really be open. They weren't getting much business prior to 2020, so there isn't much of a future in sight for them. Consumers will shift their habits to buying online. And if they are buying online anyway, why wait for a couple days to get the physical copy in, if they can get the digital copy with one click? And when we buy a book, we're not paying for the physical paper it's printed on. That's only a small portion of the total cost -- marketing, writer's royalties, logistics & supply chain, editing, administrative, dividends to shareholders, loan interest, etc. etc. Most of those costs are still there with an ebook, so the low price that got us in the door was really just loss leading. When their other sales channels run into serious problems, they're going to need to price it more conservatively.
There could be something in that idea, for sure. As long as it's the authors who are putting the prices up, and not Amazon forcing them to, I guess I'm okay with it. But of course the authors will need to realise that with prices hiked, people are less likely to buy books. So there will be a tradeoff.
Amazon has not changed royalty percentages or pricing details on the author side. They only change ebook prices of your books to price match if you offer your book cheaper on other sites. At least, I've never heard otherwise.
