This is a little less political than my other post but I am just frustrated as heel over the book publishers gouging people buying books in any electronic format, commonly known as eBooks.
When purchasing an eBook from Amazon or Barnes and Noble the price is set by the publisher. Currently the trend in pricing is to match the paperback book price. This adds a huge amount to the publisher's profit. None of the extra profit is shared with the authors.
With an eBook they do not have to print, warehouse, ship, or buy back unsold books. Their only new expense is an additional proofread for each electronic format. It is understood that newly published books will be at a premium but the eBook should never be the same price as a physical book. Even is the eBook was one dollar less than the physical book it would at least acknowledge the publisher's savings.
Some would argue that the price needs to be higher because of the loss of revenue from piracy. Those people have not learned the lesson of the music industry and iTunes. That lesson was that the lower the price of legitimate sources the lower the piracy rate. With the current high price they are encouraging piracy because there is a greater financial intensive to get a book from an illicit source. Most readers want to support the authors and understand piracy hurts them but they also understand that the inflated prices currently charged for eBooks does not help them either.
I have noticed that even as a published book gets older they do not have any method in place to reduce the price to put it more inline with the shrinking physical book price.
One publisher O'Rielly, a publisher of computer technical books does have a pricing model that sells eBooks significantly lower price. Their target audience is the most capable pirating the eBook of any group. O'Rielly has realized that having a price that reflects the savings on eBooks these folks are not likely to search for an illicit source.
The book publishing industry needs to review their pricing structure in regards to eBooks and stop the greed.
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