From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2002-08-12T09:48:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Economics of E-books? ( was re: Dr. Dobbs Ruby Article)


----- Original Message -----
From: " JamesBritt" <james@jamesbritt.com>


>
> Recently I was shopping online, looking on bn.com for a particular book.  I
> found three versions: paperback, hardcover, and Adobe e-book.  Both the
> hardcover and the electronic version cost the same, USD $18.50.  The
> paperback was half that.  I was stunned, and decided that, a year from now,
> publishers will decry the failure of E-books to take off, and claim the
> public just isn't ready for them.
>
> I'm curious, though, what people would consider a reasonable price for
> electronic articles/books, and how the availability of the free, electronic
> version of Andy & Dave's book effected sales of the hardcopy version.
>
> James Britt


Charging the same price for an e-book as a hardcover seems ludicrous to me.
Determining a reasonable price would require finely analysing the expenses,
profits etc inherent in paper books, but I imagine the e-book should cost about
half the paperback!

Bruce Eckel seems to have struck a winner with Thinking In Java (and probably
others).  People read it online, and then decide its worth having.  I didn't
know it was online before I bought it, but when I found out I was still glad I
bought it.

Andy & Dave lost at least one sale (to me) by giving the book away, because
there are other Ruby books to buy, so it seems sensible to have (access to) two
books for the same price as one.  However, reading that book online influenced
me to buy The Pragmatic Programmer, so you could think of it as a loss leader.
Anyway, I keep getting this niggling feeling that I should buy it (not for
moral satisfaction, but because it's a good book), and if I had been inside a
bookstore these last two weeks I probably would have bought it!

Cheers,
Gavin