I have started to think of fiction purchases not as purchasing the book, but purchasing the story. This helps me be easy with the price of hardcover-era ebooks; I'm buying early access to the story I want, not a stream of bits.
When you think of the purchase price of the book in terms of the total cost of production of the story - a year of the author's life, a bunch of other professional work, etc. - distributed over the total market for that work, it makes more sense for the ebook price to be approximately the paper price.
With that market-based approach, I'd expect to have the discounts on the hardcover kick in when the hardcover market is functionally dead - somewhere around paperback release. Would you still buy your library copy under that circumstance?
A secondary consideration would be textbooks and professional reference books, with significant graphical content. I'd love to see ebooks sold as teasers for those, then have the ability to apply some of that price to a discount hardcover. I may be in the minority thinking of these books differently, but I read my ebooks on my phone.
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Date: 2013-09-06 04:54 pm (UTC)When you think of the purchase price of the book in terms of the total cost of production of the story - a year of the author's life, a bunch of other professional work, etc. - distributed over the total market for that work, it makes more sense for the ebook price to be approximately the paper price.
With that market-based approach, I'd expect to have the discounts on the hardcover kick in when the hardcover market is functionally dead - somewhere around paperback release. Would you still buy your library copy under that circumstance?
A secondary consideration would be textbooks and professional reference books, with significant graphical content. I'd love to see ebooks sold as teasers for those, then have the ability to apply some of that price to a discount hardcover. I may be in the minority thinking of these books differently, but I read my ebooks on my phone.