I recently read Sea Swept by Nora Roberts. After seeing Ween’s Hero of the Month post, I was curious about this book, so I decided to buy it. I wanted it right away, so that meant buying in eBook format. When I first started purchasing eBooks, something like a year ago, the prices were quite a bit less than regular print price. For some reason, in recent months, that has changed. eBook prices are now sometimes twice what print prices are…and that kind of pisses me off. Although I truly enjoy eBooks and love the instant gratification I get when I buy one online and can immediately download it, I draw the line at paying $10.00 for a book I could buy at Borders for $7.99.
The first place I checked was Ebookwise, because I have their reader and it’s easiest to download directly from them. The price at Ebookwise? $7.49. Since the regular list price in print is $7.99, $7.49 isn’t so bad. But still, I’ve been used to paying sometimes $1.50 less for eBooks and I decided to shop around. Fictionwise, Ebookwise’s parent company was $7.99 the same as the print price. Since I wasn’t going to have the actual book to add to my library, I didn’t really want to pay that.
I decided to Google it and see what was available from where. eBookMall was the highest at $9.49. WTF? Almost $10? That’s $2.00 more than the print price. Soooo not paying that.
The price from Penguin direct was also $7.99. Resigned at this point, I decided to check one last place, Books on Board.
The BoB price? $6.27. That is a reasonable price, IMO. Yes, it’s only $1.72 less than the print price, but I think, as I’m not actually getting the book to add to my personal library, and since I can’t share it with my loved ones, it makes more sense to not pay as much as the print price. Right?
Since then I’ve done some research and BoB is considerably less all the way around. Daphne and I were talking about this last night. She was looking for BloodFever by Karen Marie Moning. Amazon has it listed, in HB, at $14.96. Diesel has it at $16.54 in eBook. Fictionwise and Ebookwise don’t even have it listed yet, something I noticed is pretty much the norm for them. They rarely have eBooks on or before the release date. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it often takes them a full week to two weeks after the release date to show them as available.
The Books on Board price? $13.31.
The moral of this story? Buy from BoB, and not Fictionwise, eReader or Ebookwise.
Ridiculous.
I’m finding the same frustration with AudioBookStandDL which sells downloadable audio books from Brilliance audio. If I buy them on CDs from AudioBookStand or Amazon, they are CONSIDERABLY less than the downloadable version. That makes no sense. The cost of CDs HAS to be higher than downloads. Just pure profit right?
And with the higher prices of ebooks, I now buy much fewer ebooks “on spec”. So, for instance, EC is slitting their own throat through the higher prices. They are signing all these tons of new authors, but not giving me any incentive to give them a try. Before, I’d go ahead and spend a couple of bucks if something sounded interesting. But, most don’t sound interesting enough to shell out $7.99 or even $5.99.
It’s criminal that so many sites can list ebooks for more than the print copy price.
Why do they do it? They dont have to pay printing/shipping costs, so why charge more?
Bastards.
Chantal,
I’m afraid it’s only going to get worse, too. As long as people buy them, they’ll keep jacking the price.
QB,
I totally agree with you. Especially with smaller pubs like EC. No thanks.
yup yup. i can’t believe that i almost bought bloodfever from amazon, cuz ya know.. it said.. save 32%, and I thought, hey now that’s pretty awesome. sure enough, i go to BoB and it’s even cheaper. i lub u for telling me about BoB Holly. Thanks!