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
It basically comes down to (just like all pricing) – would you rather sell two e-books for $20 a piece or three for $10 a piece?
Lowering prices isn’t an automatic way to increase revenue, even if it does increase volume sold.
Additionally, book publishing is in some ways monopolistic in the sense that a single publisher will own the rights to a specific book. So even though there is A LOT of competition to get you to buy different books, there isn’t multiple publishers selling Harry Potter, for example. It’s not like you and I can both sell Harry Potter books and then have to compete on price.
Latest Answers