Comments on: Blog Poll: What is the Most You Are Willing to Pay for an eBook? Why?

By: M.Artis

M.Artis — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:42:23 +0000

Because I surrounded by free books to checkout for extended periods of time within my academic library I’m willing to pay up to $3.00 max a month. To be honest I guess I’m a little old school. I rather have the paper or hard back copy in my hand with a bookmark. The downloading of ebooks can get very expensive for materials that can’t be passed on.

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New Some Survey Ideas – Stephen's Lighthouse — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:28:14 +0000

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By: Janet Vandenabeele

Janet Vandenabeele — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:06:55 +0000

For most popular titles, the price should never be more than $9.99. I realize some textbooks or technical works or other niche titles can and should be able to cost more. But the trend of ebooks topping $12.99 (or about half or more of their full hardcover price) is a little disturbing. There’s nowhere near the same production, storage and shipping charges for an ebook that there are for dead tree books. Ebooks have got to be helping publisher’s margins relative to dead tree books and they should be nurturing that market, not exploiting it out of existence.

By: Bobbi Newman

Bobbi Newman — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:41:12 +0000

Tiffany, While I do understand the comparison of ebook to print in this case it doesn’t actually work. For many reasons people don’t equate pirating with stealing (I’m not getting into whether not it is right or wrong just explaining as best I can) When you take a physical copy of something you are removing it from the store, the store no longer has it. When you download a digital copy the original is still there. You have not stolen anything. The argument is that if you hadn’t downloaded a pirated copy you would have purchased the item outright. But that’s a leap. You can’t assume every time a file is pirated that a sale is lost.

Additionally there are studies that indicate that pirating increases sales of books.

By: Bethan

Bethan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:28:40 +0000

Usually not over £1.99 (around $3.20), but I will break this occasionally – I’ve just paid £7.69 (about $12) for the new P D James, due to the need to read it NOW (£15 for the hard copy in my local bookshop).

My general rule is ‘not more than I’d pay for a 2nd-hand copy’, as this is really the demographic of book buying that I’ve replaced by going kindle. I agree with the other comments – it’s not really *buying* a book so much as paying-a-fee-to-borrow-it-for-a-while. If/when amazon introduce kindle lending in the UK, expect my ‘willing-to-pay’ figure to go down.

I will happily pay a bit more for DRM-free. As a sci-fi fan I was delighted to discover Baen’s ebooks store – as well as the free library, (http://www.baen.com/library/default.asp), many of their books are available as DRM-free, multi-format ebooks for $4-$6.

The average price I’ve paid for kindle books? $0. I estimate that I have around 600 Project Gutenberg books on there. I do love the convenience of being able to buy in-copyright books, but honestly? I’d probably still be super-delighted with my e-reader if it was public domain content only. Maybe I should have waited for PG or the Internet Archive to produce one pre-loaded with all their material!

(Amanda C Davis – thanks for the tip on The Fold series! Just downloaded Book 1)

By: Holly

Holly — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:10:23 +0000

I prefer to pay no more than 9.99, though I’ve made exceptions for just released bestsellers by my favorite authors (I consider anything above that a convenience fee for buying it on day of publication). And while I’d certainly prefer a world without DRM, until then, that’s what Calibre and its helpful extensionss are for.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:08:01 +0000

I would pay <$5 for regular books*, if they have DRM. I would maybe pay $19.99 for a textbook with DRM. I just don't see why I should pay more for a digital object that can't be transferred to another, future, device, or given or sold to someone else.

DRM'd files are just rental agreements in the long run.

I am wondering what's going to happen in the future when kindle is discontinued or changed so substantially that the original ebooks won't work – will there be a backlash?

For what it's worth, normal people that I talk to (people who are not in the library, media, or tech world), don't care about the DRM on their kindle files. They would like to pay less, but overall LOVE the convenience of ebooks and ereaders.

*O'Reilly books are an exception – you get DRM-free files in PDF – downloadable to multiple devices – very good value

By: LibrarianMom

LibrarianMom — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:05:57 +0000

Will only pay $7.99 (and haven’t even paid that yet) because I can’t lend the book or even give it away when I’m done. So far, I’ve only downloaded free books or those that are less than $3.

By: Chad H

Chad H — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 15:04:18 +0000

Generally anything over $9.99 for a regular fiction title seems too much for me given the restrictions of DRM. But I’ll make exceptions in some cases. If the book is, say, 1000 pages then it’s so much easier to carry my Kindle on the bus than the physical copy. So suddenly the increased advantages of the e-format are worth more to me and I’ll pretty happily pay some more for that.

I also won’t ever pay more than the print price. If DRM were removed I might reconsider that restriction.

By: Tiffany

Tiffany — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:09:39 +0000

That’s an interesting view. Do you think people shoplift expensive hard copy books because they “see no reasonable option”?