Now I generally keep my ranting to the "What's ruining your life right now" thread, but as this is both a rant and a question I thought it warranted a thread of its own. I am the happy owner of a Kindle. I like reading books and I bought the Kindle out of a "how can I combine tech with bookreading"-feeling. I do like the feel of a book, but the Kindle is just so much more versatile. Now for the ranty part: Book pricing. How can it be, that an eBook version of a popular action novel costs 19.54$, but the equivalent hardcover version costs just 16$ with free shipping? My main concern with this is that I would have no problem buying it, if it was not for the fact that I could get it for absolutetly NIL from certain shady sites I shall not mention here. I guess it is the same as with movies. Noone wants to pay the full price but there is no "cheap" alternative. My question remains then, do any of you know a site where I can buy eBooks directly from the author without paying exorbitant amounts in "Amazon-and-Publisher-taxes" and thus support the author directly? It does not have to be in the Kindle (.mobi) format as I can convert it using Calibre.
I can't think of one. The problem is that the publishers are pricing them the same as normal books, which increases their profits, but at the same time(at least in the UK) ebooks get hit with VAT for an added 20% wheras traditional books don't. If the publishing companies don't get their act together they'll find themselves in the same pothole as the film and music industry.
This really aggravates me, there is honestly no justification for doing this. At the moment, I'm finding that I'm buying lots of the first book in a series as they tend to be really cheap; Song of Fire and Ice for less than £4
The publishing industry is definitely going the way of the music and movie industries, and not learning from what has happened before. I teach courses on tablets (among other things), and the one comment that gets made is why e-books are so expensive - they're often not much cheaper than print books but with none of the manufacturing costs of print books. So why the high cost? As well as how to access e-books from places like Amazon, I also show learners how to access e-books through the library - there is a reasonable selection of titles available (more than I thought there would be), but only one copy of a book is allowed to be "on loan" at any one time - a restriction placed on the libraries by the publishers. I also heard on the news a few months ago that publishers wanted libraries to buy a "new" copy of an e-book every couple of years, since that's how often they'd re-purchase print editions. I don't think e-books and e-readers are a non-starter, but I don't think it's going to really take off until the publishing industry stops being so greedy. In the meantime, I'm just reading through the free classics from Project Gutenberg
Amazon and it's DRM. D'oh! I'm looking to buy the wifey a kobo/kindle or nook this Christmas. I can't get my head around the prices either. It MUST cost more to buy materials, print and bind then ship and distribute a book whether it is hard or paperback. An eBook on the other hand... ERM server and bandwidth that they already pay for. I'm really hoping that they do something soon about the prices, I'd also like to see eBook format given with actual books, I like to hold a book but I like tech, if I could buy a book and keep an ebook in my bag to pick up and put down when i get 10 minutes.
It isn't just Amazon, it's the entire (stupid) publishing industry that is simply too stupid to cotton on to the fact that the public isn't as stupid as they think. I can buy a copy of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine from Amazon for £21.99, shipped direct to my door. Or, I can buy the iPhone version, which is literally a copy-and-paste job with a few linking features thrown in for £34.99. That's £13 more expensive, for a product that doesn't need printing, shipping or anything - so of course I'm not going to bloody buy it! I'd fork out £15 at most. Some publishers manage medical education books okay - you buy the book and get a free online edition, which is great, but it isn't a full eBook. I use my Kindle a lot for convenience and for not having to fill my small flat with books. However I do believe most titles are simply too expensive, and there is a total lack of discount sales as well.
I got a Kindle over the summer and only used it a wee bit, I have a ton of actual books that I haven't gotten round to reading yet. But then i was away with work for two months, tore through the 6 or 7 I'd loaded up before leaving and bought loads more. Thank goodness for free wifi! Most of the books I've bought so far have been very slightly cheaper than the print version, but only just. i have a few photography/cinematography titles in my wishlist which are as dear, if not a few pounds more. Damn shame, it was a absolute life saver abroad but it won't replace actual books until it makes monetary sense.
Q: If you buy a Kindle Paperwhite, can I use it to read non-Amazon bought eBooks? Currently I'm using my iPad but it's bloody heavy :/
Yes. I've got a number of books from other places (open source, etc) that I've got on my Kindle. They do need to be converted but there's a number of pieces of software which can do this. I'm not sure about books from the istore, though, as I haven't tried it. Edit: Ninja'd
I'm sure I read somewhere that the per book cost of printing and distribution of paperbacks is trivial compared with IP costs which is why, after vat, ebooks will always be slightly dearer. Couple with Amazons heavy discount on paper books and publishers hoping to keep their mark-up on ebooks pushes a very heavy disparity.
I can understand that the new way of doing things will always cost more. It's the VAT part which bugs me, though. It's the same material just in a different format
Governments are very slow to react so it will probably be years before this is changed. Although the argument could be made that ebooks are a luxury item, after all you need a fairly expensive device in the first place. I'm not entirely sure on this but I think we're pretty lucky to get tax relief on "essentials" like food, children's cloths and of course books. Some of the other countries notable Australia and NZ you pay GST (about 15%) on everything, even your daily bread.
That is why the vast majority of people i know pirate the 150€+ books they need in order to do their work.
I'm still amazed that kindle have absolutely no anti piracy measures in place, they dont even try to make it complicated. Plug your kindle in, it appears as a usb drive, copy/past anything you want to read across, done! Obviously I don't condone this, it just astounds me that there's no attempt to block simple drag and drop of any old documents/books onto your kindle.
Just want to highlight this response above - you get an email address @kindle.com which IIRC only affects email from your registered account email addresses and will put your non-Amazon ebooks onto your Kindle via whispernet. I'm not sure what formats are supported for conversion but its definitely in the Kindle help on the Kindle portal.
Look at what THQ did, they pulled in 5 million dollars over a short period of time by offering a reasonable price on their humble bundle. I think book/music/film industry would do better if they lowered the prices a bit, or at least have sales like the Steam sales.
