Ammanas Posted December 8, 2017 Report Share Posted December 8, 2017 So my wife is going to give me a Kindle Paperwhite for Christmas (already excited for several book series on Kindle Unlimited) but my question to the community is who sets the prices for Kindle Books and why are some so high? I noticed that the Oathbringer e-book is about $17 on amazon and the physical copy is selling for less than $15. This makes no sense to me. I wanted the paperwhite more for the indie titles, so I am not complaining, but just am confused and was wondering if someone could explain why some kindle books are so expensive. What makes the most sense is to have the ebook cost a couple of dollars less than the mass market paperback edition; so using Oathbringer as a example the price should be about $7. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos he/him Posted December 9, 2017 Report Share Posted December 9, 2017 I don't agree. Any bookseller selling physical Oathbringers at 15 is making a straight up loss. That shouldn't be the price point in your mind. To be perfectly honest, books have value. The text has value. $7 for Oathbringer, in my opinion, is absurdly cheap for the amount of content you get. People would buy digital movies for $17 and you get way more hours of entertainment out of it. Just because there's no print costs doesn't mean the price shouldn't be reasonable as Dragonsteel Entertainment still put in a ton of effort into the text, as did Tor. That is what you are paying for. Books really don't sell that spectacularly compared to other media and a lot of people need to get paid. The mass market paperback of Words of Radiance has an MSRP of $10. Its ebook is $10. That's a fine price. Additionally, consider this period before the mass market paperback comes out like a movie theater and a new movie. It's the most expensive then because it is desirable. Those prices do go down eventually but we are in the release window. I do think $17 for the ebook is a really good deal. I'm very leery about e-stores. It makes people think, "yes, the price for a game should be free or a dollar." What! That is insane! At some point people need to pay for art or else it's not going to be made. Sure, Brandon surely would write even if he made no money, but I'm resistant to the idea that all writers should be shortchanged on ebooks with very low prices. That will eventually mean less books are made. I would like books to be written. I cannot agree that a 430,000 word tome like Oathbringer should ever be $7. That feels very wrong to me. Seriously, $30 feels like a way better deal for Oathbringer than any movie, if you think entertainment per hour. I'll be honest. I'd rather pay more for an ebook for its convenience. That has value to me. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ammanas Posted December 14, 2017 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2017 Hah just saw I got a response. Thanks for your answer; you made some good points. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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