Thoughts On eBook Pricing

So this past week, Novel Rocket had a post by Jim Rubart about ebook pricing. He covers some of the current quandaries in ebook pricing that go on in the minds of authors and publishers, but I felt like as a reader, he didn’t necessarily cover the topic all that fairly. (Now granted, the site is for writers and aspiring writers, so maybe he figured it wasn’t the target audience, but to call it “stingy book buyer’s disease” seems…unfair. We’ll stop there.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and lobby for free books for all. I definitely believe that books, by and large, should be purchased, not just given away. After all, writers and publishers deserve to be paid. They provide goods to the consumer, and as such we should be willing to pay for those goods.

However, I think we need to figure out what’s reasonable and go from there. Obviously, reasonable is a subjective term. Some people may think it’s reasonable to only ever get free books. Others may think it’s reasonable to pay $12 for an ebook. I think the real reasonable lies somewhere in the middle.

The fact of the matter is, ebooks cost less to produce. There’s no printing costs. No warehousing. No storage. No shipping. But you do still have cover design (though that’s split with the physical book) and layout (usually completely different from the physical book). You do still have all the editing costs (split with the other editions). So there are costs for an ebook, they’re just less. This is why I don’t believe ebooks should only and ever be free and why I hope, if you go out of your way to only read free ebooks by belonging to the myriad of review groups that you do go ahead and leave reviews on every book you read for free (publishers participate in those programs with the expectation that they are offering their good (the book) for free to a service provider (a reviewer) so it’s deemed a reasonable trade. But there are many people who participate in these programs, read scads of free books, and only seldom actually post reviews. This is…wrong.)

Rubart, in his post, makes the comparison to an ebook and a meal at Subway, with the underlying idea appearing to be that $9 is a reasonable price for an ebook. I’ll admit it, I balk – both at the analogy and the price.

If I were going to compare an ebook to food, it wouldn’t be to a complete meal. It’s more like a snack. Cause you *need* meals. You *want* snacks. Just like you *want* books. (And as much I read and love to read, I can’t, in all honestly, say I *need* books. I would live a long time without books. That timeframe is much shorter if I try to go without food.) Would I pay $9 for a snack? Nope. Not even at Disney World.

So what would I pay for a snack? $5 or less. And realistically, that’s my preferred price point. I can spend $5 without really thinking about it. I’ll drop that in the $1-$3 aisle at Target for something the kids will play with and break within a day or two. Or at Starbucks. Or on an ice cream. Or…you get the idea. And it’s a price point that isn’t prohibitive for most income brackets. (Not all, obviously. But largely speaking, most people can find $5 a month that they can drop on a luxury item like a snack or a book or a latte.)

That’s the other thing. I don’t think you should have to save up to buy an ebook. A really  nice hardcover? Sure, save up for that if you’re into hardcovers. But an ebook? Something you’re likely to forget you have because you read it and filed it away on your Kindle and you have no physical reminder that it’s there for your re-reading pleasure unless you just happen to remember? Uh-uh.

My perspective doesn’t change when I look at it from an author standpoint either. Sure, with a big press, some authors may find their royalties aren’t great on ebooks when they’re priced low like that. But that’s for them to talk to their agent about and see about negotiating. That’s not the reader’s problem. The author is still getting paid, so is the publisher – the details? Those aren’t my business nor are they anything a reader should care about if they paid something for the book. Because if you paid something that was reasonable (there I go with that word again, I know) you should be able to assume (yes, I know) that everyone made something off the transaction. And that’s all I think it takes for reasonable and fair to factor in.

So what about you? What’s your ebook price point?