Publishing’s Million Dollar Question: What Price E-Books?

Digital book pricing has been an evolving, inexact science for years. Today, some of the e-book’s brightest minds are trying to come up with a fair price for these relatively new products.

The e-book pricing debate on TeleRead arose from an ongoing thread at a mobile reader discussion board, where readers complained about overpriced digital books.

What do you think? Are digital books over or under-priced? This debate nearly sank the music industry before the advent of iTunes, so publishing folks need to answer this million dollar question. Here’s a juicy excerpt:

“To get the e-book down to the same cost as its cheapest ‘print’ counterpart, it would need to list for 30-50% cheaper than the print edition. I can hear the publishers gasping now, but remember that nobody profits from my second-hand purchase except the used bookstore guy. By setting a fairer e-book price, everyone is buying their own copy ‘new’ and they get more profit.”

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