I won't buy digital books simply because of the price. Why should we pay the same as people who get a hard copy. I use the Oyster book service. $10 a month, and unlimited downloads. Even better, 3 of us in my family get to DL at that price. The bad part is you can't get new releases. But they have 500K+ books you can DL. I just started on Father's Day, and I am on my third book. No trips to the library, and no late fees. Do you think digital downloads of new release books are fairly priced?
Nah their not really there's a lot of shenanigans still going on but there is a convenience factor of having a new book in seconds although that should be a side benefit not something we are charged extra for. I'm all for authors getting their money but in the case of many ebooks everything and I mean everything goes to the publisher the authors usually sign away ebook rights as part of their publishing deal. I'll probably keep buying ebooks just because that's how I like reading but it is a sickener when in some cases it's actually higher priced than a physical copy.
Here physical books are stupid prices, so generally ebook prices are a third on release unless of course you want to order the physical product from overseas and pay post and packaging.
The price tag for digital books on the Kindle store for example is about them same for paperbacks. So no I don't think it's fair, especially with the DRM thing. I thought the whole point of digital books was to spread the love of reading and make it available for anyone, but nope, they're region-locked. Plus I also disliked the non-availability of some older books, and there should be more incentives to push editors (at least in developped countries) to provide digital versions for every book they have in print. I can't tell you how angry I am for missing out the whole Paul Halter collection when they have like 6 of his books only as ebooks...
Besides the fact that this looks like an excuse to talk about Oyster (which I hate btw because they are name dropping netflix to try to sell this to me on Facebook), I'll answer this question. There's not right or wrong answer to this, it's a matter of perception. Author's deserve to make money and publishers also deserve to make money because they do advertise and promote for the author to get the word out. From what I understand, it's a tough business and I don't think ebook service providers like Amazon are exactly making a ton of money off of the ebook sales, but then again neither are the publishers and authors, who actually want to raise the standard price to over 10 dollars. Most people don't see the bigger picture here, nor do they even care. I'm like that too sometimes. We care about lower prices (walmart), connivence, and it has to be all about us, and only us, which is always at the expense of others, whether we care or know it or not. Now with that being said, I absolutely love my Kindle and these 10 dollar books I buy. The convenience I get from previewing and downloading these books in a matter of seconds is great. Ereaders used to suck before the kindle and I'm glad amazon did it right. They made technology less about maintenance and more invisible. Now I guess you could say that the prices of these books are sometimes the same cost as the paper books but I don't mind it for the convenience. I haven't done any extensive research on how much money those publishers actually make off these ebook sales but I am aware that it's not a lot. I'm not here to disagree or argue anyones opinions here but this is just just simple my own from looking at things with a bigger picture here.
