kindle prices

by susanne brindle
14th February 2012

Although I do not yet own a Kindle I am surprised at the low prices authors sell their books for. I've seen plenty of good books, priced around £7 for paperback and only 99p for the Kindle version. I wonder where it is all going. Any views?

Replies

Hi Susanne,

I read somewhere that the publishers are hoping for a double buy from their readers. Their thinking is that readers will take more of a gamble on new genres, authors etc for little cost. If they then enjoy the book, they believe that the reader will purchase the physical copy and have it in their home on display (this gets into a whole other debate about books as decoration...)

Personally, I am a little worried about the number of bestselling e-books that can be downloaded for free from bit torrent websites. E-books are easier to copy and distribute than their physical counterpart. For every one e-book sold, there are countless copies made, meaning less money for the author and the publishing house, which will ultimately affect their attitude to taking on new authors.

Kind regards,

Tony

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Tony Williams
14/02/2012