Very Small Experiment
Some people have very violently yelled at me (electronically, thankfully) for pointing out instances where Amazon's Kindle prices are actually higher than print versions of the same book. These scary people are basically implying that I'm making it up, or some such nonsense.
I just saw where Paul Harding was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, Tinkers. As of this moment, the Kindle price is $9.99, and the trade paperback is $8.22.
The obvious point to make is that prices fluctuate; many Kindle prices have started out high, especially, it seems, when the publication date has been recent. They then often go down, in the meantime prompting rabid posters and e-mailers to be mean to others.
I haven't been shy about my feelings toward e-books: there is a niche for them, and they will co-exist with print books. My two big fears are that because "New York" publishers have become so consolidated that they will be able to dictate what form their offerings take, and that the "print books are better but technology will take over no matter what" folks will enable a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Clearly, any case where an electronic version requiring no printing, no shipping, no distribution and no shelf space can command higher prices than a print version, which requires all of those things, is not a sustainable thing. And the agency model that many publishers are turning to for their e-books is simply going to make things even less clear.
I have a Sony Reader and I have a Kindle. They're great to travel with, but you know what? I read the public domain books that cost me nothing to download (see my earlier post about two thirds of the Amazon's bestselling Kindle list being available for $0.00). I have two readers but I spend, um, nothing on actual e-books. One day I would like to read all of Richard Burton's "Arabian Nights" volumes and if I don't come across an affordable set in an antiquarian bookstore (I missed an opportunity years ago in Florida), I'll read the e-version. I could read e-books for the rest of my life and never pay a cent for them. Yes, the authors have all been dead forever but they're still books I'd like to read.
But I digress, which is easy to do with such a big and complex topic. The point is that somewhere along the line either the print version of Harding's book will go up, or the Kindle version will go down. Since the latter seems extremely unlikely, and it's difficult to see the former, the experiment I mentioned will simply be to watch this title and see what happens.
In the meantime, nobody yell at me for pointing out the greater e-book price, it's real, it's right there on the site. Until it isn't. But really, I'm not lying, once all the probing was done the ship put me right back in my bed, and only one side of my face was tanned. Spooky.
I just saw where Paul Harding was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, Tinkers. As of this moment, the Kindle price is $9.99, and the trade paperback is $8.22.
The obvious point to make is that prices fluctuate; many Kindle prices have started out high, especially, it seems, when the publication date has been recent. They then often go down, in the meantime prompting rabid posters and e-mailers to be mean to others.
I haven't been shy about my feelings toward e-books: there is a niche for them, and they will co-exist with print books. My two big fears are that because "New York" publishers have become so consolidated that they will be able to dictate what form their offerings take, and that the "print books are better but technology will take over no matter what" folks will enable a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Clearly, any case where an electronic version requiring no printing, no shipping, no distribution and no shelf space can command higher prices than a print version, which requires all of those things, is not a sustainable thing. And the agency model that many publishers are turning to for their e-books is simply going to make things even less clear.
I have a Sony Reader and I have a Kindle. They're great to travel with, but you know what? I read the public domain books that cost me nothing to download (see my earlier post about two thirds of the Amazon's bestselling Kindle list being available for $0.00). I have two readers but I spend, um, nothing on actual e-books. One day I would like to read all of Richard Burton's "Arabian Nights" volumes and if I don't come across an affordable set in an antiquarian bookstore (I missed an opportunity years ago in Florida), I'll read the e-version. I could read e-books for the rest of my life and never pay a cent for them. Yes, the authors have all been dead forever but they're still books I'd like to read.
But I digress, which is easy to do with such a big and complex topic. The point is that somewhere along the line either the print version of Harding's book will go up, or the Kindle version will go down. Since the latter seems extremely unlikely, and it's difficult to see the former, the experiment I mentioned will simply be to watch this title and see what happens.
In the meantime, nobody yell at me for pointing out the greater e-book price, it's real, it's right there on the site. Until it isn't. But really, I'm not lying, once all the probing was done the ship put me right back in my bed, and only one side of my face was tanned. Spooky.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 1:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home