eBook pricing out of wack

The other day I went to buy some of the books in my Amazon wish list. I probably have 20 books ready to read on my iPad, but I thought I would pick up a few more to clean out my wish list some. What drove me crazy, and prevented me from buying many books was the crazy Kindle pricing. Why do most kindle books cost $12? On many occasions the paper edition was cheaper, and for a few even a hardcover book was cheaper than the kindle edition. Why? You can’t tell me it’s cheaper to chop down a bunch of trees, make some paper, print out the books, fill up the truck with gas, and ship the books across the country; than it is to send a 2 meg file max over the internet to anybody in the world in seconds.

Ebook publishers need to wake up. They need to look at the app store model. If an app is under $3 I pretty much buy it without thinking about it. When apps are priced higher, I think about it, and often don’t purchase them. Books to me have more entertainment value, and my no thinking purchase barrier is probably in the $5 to $8 range. At $12 I think about it, and often don’t make the purchase. If I see I can get the paper version cheaper I don’t just buy the paper one. It pisses me off and I don’t buy either, and will probably never buy it. I bet I’m not alone. Ebook publishers would make a killing just by passing some of their savings onto the customer.

I did end up only buying two ebooks. I bought two Scott Sigler books. I bought The Rookie for $4.99 and The Starter for $2.99. They were priced in that “no think” zone. Scott gets it, and hopefully ebook publishers realize how many more sales they will make just buy getting into that “no think” price zone.