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
I think most e-books are indeed cheaper than printed books. But the price isn’t about what it takes to produce them, it’s about what price people are willing to pay.
Also: How cone when i buy the paper book they dont just include the e-book free?
While not the main reason, one of the reasons may be is because they also force people to things like ebook sharing programs; which also returns as revenue to the authors by the per read page.
If the prices of all ebooks are, say, $1-$5, no one would be interested in those sharing programs. However; they know that their own audience will most likely buy the ebooks to keep them even for the same price, and increase the number of audience by sharing programs rather than decreasing the ebook prices.
Most of the cost/value of a book is the intellectual property contained in the book, not the physical paper and cardboard. It’s the author’s time writing and researching the book, the editors time editing the book, the designers who do the layout and cover art, it’s the marketing behind the book. all of those are the same whether sold in print or e-book format. For a $20 book, maybe $2 of the cost is the paper its printed on and the cover its bound in.
And most importantly, the value of the content is the same to the reader whether in paper or electronic form, whether that’s entertainment reading a work of fiction, knowledge in a non-fiction book, etc.
The price of anything is determined by what the market will bear, and not by the costs of its production. The only time the costs become relevant to pricing are where the profit margin is so small that it is not worth continuing to make it even to hold their position in the market.
It’s the same reason for all digital vs. physical content (movies, music, video games, etc): because they want people to have a reason to keep buying physical. When prices are the same, customers choose based on their personal preference. If one is consistently cheaper than the other, then far more people will gravitate to the cheaper option, hurting the sales of the more expensive option.
It keeps their retailer partners happy, it keeps their “purist” customers who prefer physical books happy because they’re not forced to pay a “paper surcharge”, and it helps keep production costs of physical books lower.
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