Thanks for commenting. Yes, in principle I do have the option of switching publishers, but it’s not nearly as easy as you think, and I would probably lose both income and readers if I tried.

That would be like quitting my job when I didn’t have another job lined up, basically. I explain in detail here, if you’re curious why:

http://www.jlake.com/2010/02/04/writingpublishing-what-my-publisher-does-for-me-and-why-i-wont-just-quit#cutid4

Best,

Jay

I think publishers need to be selling ebook formats directly to consumers and ebook formats need to be interchangeable. Having a middle man (Amazon) is absolutely silly in the 21st century for electronic works transfer. Otherwise, I’ll keep on going to half price books precisely because the price points aren’t there for electronic publishing to make it worth my time, and I honestly don’t have the funds to pay for more than a handful of trade paperback book editions.

On one side the boycott hurts the authors, on the other anything above $9.99 for an eletronic copy of a DRM infested book is getting ridiculous.

Publishers need to understand that the eletronic book market is not the physical book market and its not the music market. It’s somewhere in between. Without the paper,printing,shipping,warehousing fees the prices should be substantially lower and still be able to pay everyone the same ammount. In addition, while some people read only electronically, there are a lot of people who can’t,don’t or won’t. The electronic books are going to be like samples for these people, allowing them to read a few chapters and convincing them to buy a physical copy or not. It’s not like music where the digital file sounds the same whether it comes from a cd or an mp3.

I’m not sure what the price should be but it shouldn’t be above 9.99 (especially with DRM).

It probably won’t strike you as odd that I *do* see the relationship between sale price of a book and author income (it’s why I constantly struggle with my desire to spend less money on books while at the same time not wanting to have that negative impact to the author).

It doesn’t strike me as odd that people would see the price of an electronic book and expect it to be less than the print version. Many people probably assume that there is no cost to produce the item (wrong, there’s still layout, editing, copy editing, cover art, etc) because there is no tangible item being produced, therefore, they should get their non-tangible item at a lower price.

This is another thing that I struggle with. My Kindle is more for convience sake. I want to be able to snag a book whenever/wherever, and I’m out of shelf space so unless it is a book that I desperately want a hardcover/TPB/MMPB of (mostly these books that get my precious shelf space are either by authors I know, authors whose work I absolutely love, or a combination of the above), I’m going to get it on my Kindle.

But the authors who write the books that fall below my Golden Shelf Space standard aren’t any less deserving of payment for work done, even if I don’t have a Physical Thing(tm) to show for my purchase. I think the only time I’ve balked at a Kindle book price is when I’d've balked at paying the same amount for a real-space copy of the book.

Realistically, however, I don’t want to pay “hardcover price” for a book that I wouldn’t buy in hardcover if there is a MMPB or TPB out at a reduced price. If there is only a hardcover available when I desperately feel the need to read the book I’m staring at, however, then I’ll spend “hardcover price” for it on my Kindle.

I’m probably not your standard reader/buyer, though. -.-

9.99 is high, to me, for something that could be taken away from me on a whim, whenever rights-owners decide it has to happen.

I also would rather pay less for an eBook than for a mass market paperback. As a writer, I made sure my eBook publisher (Apex) offered eBooks below what a mass market would hypothetically cost, even if it impacts my pocketbook.

At the end of the day, we provide a service to readers. They do not owe us money. They do not owe us a living. Serving the reader ought to be the focus of eBooks, in my humble opinion.

That said, I do think that there is some weirdness going on from the Monopoly Amazon has (or seems to have) over the Kindle version of eBooks. This thread has differing reports on the price setting. Per Patrick Amazon sets it, per a self-publisher the Publisher sets it. I suspect that the Publisher gets to set the wholesale and that Amazon has a standard markup as the retailer/distributor. This is similar to what we experienced with a recent digital program for Video Games.

The author gets paid, likely, out of a contract negotiated rate either on the Wholesale or the Retail. Depends on contract, yada yada.

What this really says to me is that publishers need to be able to have the ability to do a price change. When only the hardbound is out, I think having the eBook version out at a specific price point that is lower makes sense. When the Mass Market comes out, the price should be dropped below that of the Mass Market.

It is hard to track, I’ll admit, especially with a lot of books.