Ongoing Reader Debate: Why Are E-Books So Expensive?

As fears of e-book piracy mount and publishers struggle through the recession, almost all experts agree–digital books will play a crucial role in the future of publishing.

To that end, GalleyCat readers have debated e-book pricing for weeks in the comments section. The conversation grew so big that it spread over to TeleRead as well.

Many readers debated creation costs for a digital book. One reader estimated: “A typical fiction ebook would have minimal composition costs–maybe $200. There is rarely any designed involved–they are flowed into a pre-existing template. If the book is taken from a real-life book, the proofing is already done. Even for an ebook only, copyediting and corrections shouldn’t be over $1000.”

Publisher Walt Shiel offered these thoughts: “The e-book reading experience is still no where near on a par with that of a print book, so a higher price is just not acceptable to me…As a micro-publisher, I see e-books as an integral part of our information business model. We publish all our e-books with a coupon for a discount (equal to the e-book purchase price) applicable to the purchase price of the print edition.”

Finally, Hugh McGuire urged publishers to scrap the old ways of thinking about distribution: “maybe the publishers should get together and devise a commercial system to take advantage of the benefits of ebooks rather than applying broken models to a new medium.”

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