Recently I found out that people are boycotting any eBook that is being sold on Amazon if it costs more than $9.99.
From the link above:
Charging $11 for a paperback novel — without the paperback! — is ridiculous.
Charging $18 for a digital version of a book that relies heavily on photographs — which look bad on the Kindle — is ridiculous.
Charging $12 for a business book you can get at Costco in 2 weeks for $9.99 is ridiculous.** LET’S TAKE ACTION **
Let’s tag all over-$9.99 books with the tag "9.99boycott"!
Just go to the form field under the "Tags Customers Associate with This Product" headline and type "9.99boycott" (without the quotes) and click the button.
I’m totally behind this. One of the reasons that I choose to invest in the Kindle (I bought the first Kindle –K1– used for $250.00 some time ago) was because it would give me access to content for a good price.
To me a good price for a QP is about $10.00 USD, and about $3.00-4.00 USD for books that I could buy as mass market paper backs.
Granted there are other reasons that I wanted to have a Kindle (gadget lust, the ability to carry many books in my bag with out the bag breaking my shoulder, etc) but the price point of the content was really the thing that motivated me the most.
In fact before buying the Kindle I was looking at a Sony E-Reader 505 model which cost much less than the Kindle did, I could also get the Sony new, and it has a better screen than the K1. When I was talking about which device to get with friends of mine they all pointed out that the Kindle would give me access to Amazon’s store all the time. I knew about this, and truth be told it sort of worried me because I tend to impulse buy books.
In the end the Kindle won because it had a better selection, and most the time the it would cost me less to buy a book from Amazon’s Kindle store than the Sony Store.
So now when I see the prices of books going above $9.99 I get pissed. Yes pissed. It makes me feel like Amazon is just jerking me around, and ripping me (a very loyal customer who pays extra cash every year to have a “Amazon Prime” account) off.
I was talking about how much this pissed me off with another book person I know, and he told me that it might be the publishers insisting that the price be raise. Maybe. Nonetheless, I think that if that is what is going on that Amazon should use it’s juice and tell the publisher to go to hell. Period.
-N
on Apr 4th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
[...] my last post I mentioned that before I bought my K1 (original Kindle) I was seriously thinking about buying a [...]
on Apr 11th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I have a book published with Kindle digital text format. List price is $2.99, sale price is $2.39. Of that $2.39 I recieve $1.05 per copy sold.
I have to agree that many books are over priced. I would never pay $9.99 or more for a digital text. I don’t think I would even pay $4.99 so I can understand why readers are so upset.
But I also know there are many good books listed that have a fair price.