Eli5: Why is the purchase price of e-books basically the same as print.

Question

I would expect e-books to be considerably cheaper than printed books, since there are reduced distribution and production costs. Yet the retail price often doesn’t match those savings versus an e-book. I would hope that the authors royalties would reflect some of the savings in production costs.

In: Economics

Answer 1

the reason for that depends entirely on where you are located.

in many countries book prices are the same regardless of where you buy the book or in which format you buy it as there are laws preventing stores from selling books for lower prices.