<p>I am soooo angry! Ever since I obtained my ipad for Christmas, I’ve been shopping for ebooks via Ibooks, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, and have been absolutely appalled at the prices. One of the books on my list costs $14.99—more than the price of the paper back edition! I don’t understand how they get away with charging these prices for a product for which they incur little to no overhead. Ebooks eliminate the need to pay people to run and maintain the massive presses required to print physical books, the need to light, heat and cool the buildings in which those presses housed, the need to purchase ink and paper to print those books, warehouse inventory, or ship it to stores. With ebooks, they don’t risk over-estimating demand, thereby incurring print overruns. Neither is there a need to clear books they couldn’t move at list price. In my view, the money they make on ebooks is largely gravy. What am I missing?</p>
<p>I don’t understand why there hasn’t been an organized movement to protest the cost of ebooks. If consumers suspended the downloading of ebooks for a week’s time, perhaps even just a day, that would send a clear message to publishers that we don’t take kindly to being fleeced in this manner. Why has there been so little push back?</p>
<p>Check your local library. After getting a Kindle for the holiday I am able to download books for free through my library via an Amazon site. It may not be all the books on Amazon, but there are still thousands.</p>
<p>I push back by getting my books from the library. They are only now getting Kindles or Nooks, but I don’t like those gadgets anyway. I agree with you that eBooks are just pure “gravy”, but there is still the cost to market these books.</p>
<p>I don’t like the eBook format because I enjoy selling books when I’m done with them (I dislike reading books more than once)- you can’t do that with an eBook. </p>
<p>There are places where you can get the books for free, but they’re not going to be any mainstream books or authors and rarely anything current.</p>
<p>ETA: I’m honestly not sure whether or not those prices will go up or down. They could go down as they get more customers and the newness wears off. They could also go down as more and more companies compete. Or they could go up because they know people don’t want their multi-hundred dollar gizmo to go to waste. Hm.</p>
<p>You’re not missing anything. The whole point of being a corporation is to maximize gravy.</p>
<p>Right now this industry has very few players, so there’s little price competition. Maybe down the line, other companies will come in, which hopefully will exert some downward pressure on prices.</p>
<p>So far I’ve only downloaded books that were free, but sites like gutenberg project can’t upload free books until the copyright expires, so they were all older…</p>
Not organized but you can do what I do - don’t buy any that aren’t priced reasonably - especially don’t buy any where the ebook costs more than a paper version.</p>
<p>On the flip side, there are plenty of ebooks that are substantially less than the paper versions and some don’t even exist as paper versions. Some are free, some are < $3, and there seem to be a lot of them at around $9.99. </p>
<p>I agree with you though - it makes no sense that an ebook would ever be more than a paper version unless they’re just trying to unload the books they printed too many of.</p>
<p>So…my husband gave me a Nook. I told him that I love books…yes real books…and I can get a bunch of books from Amazon less than on Barnes and Noble. Good for trips…less book dust…I HATE the daa$$thing. I love a real book.</p>
<p>The ones I’ve seen are textbooks, but still! I would like to purchase a lot of athletic training books on the kindle, etc but it is too expensive at this point.</p>
<p>Here is the other thing that gets me mad. I am a Barnes and Noble member so every so often I received an email for % off a purchase, either in the store or online. You cannot use these discounts for any ebooks or anything Nook related. Last year when I received my Nook for Christmas I wanted to buy a cover. I had a few of those coupons but couldn’t use them for the Nook cover. So I marched over to Tuesday Morning and found one for a fraction of the cost as the one in B and N. I love book stores and I like my Nook for certain situations but the whole pricing thing is crazy.</p>
<p>Like others have mentioned, use the library to download books. I wait until they are pretty cheap before I buy and ebook. And the others are correct as far as ebook prices versus the book itself. I can use my B and N member discount and sometimes get a book sent to my house cheaper that I can get it at the store or as and ebook. Now that is crazy.</p>
<p>There is no reason you can’t have both. I still read regular print books and I also enjoy my Nook. The Nook is what I take on trips or to places where I have to wait around. Real books come with me when I take a bath or even when I read before bed. I try not to pay more than 9.99 for book and usually find some for free or for under $5. Barnes and Nobles (maybe Amazon does this too?) offers a free book every Friday. Sometimes it is good, sometimes it isn’t.</p>
<p>What I hate is the browsing – sorry, it is just not same as being in the library or the bookstore. I have to know approximetly what it is that I want before I start – I can’t easily just wander until I find something that intrigues me. Six titles displayed on the screen at once out of thousands of choices. If I know what I want the Nook works well, either buying or from the library, but if I’m just looking it is a pain.</p>
<p>I have a Kindle which I love. I have had it for several years and yes the price for ebooks has skyrocketed. I get several blogs and the Kindle daily deal which gives me many options for free and discounted books. I think you can get Kindle on the iPad. I still occasionally pay full price for a book I really want,no big deal. And I “browse” for books on my laptop rather than my Kindle because as others have mentioned I find it easier.
Here are some of the links I subsribe to that list free/cheap books</p>