Surely a few hundred kilobytes of text should cost less than a printed copy.
Read on to find out why ebooks can cost more than real books.
Why Are Kindle Books More Expensive?
Why are Kindle books more expensive than physical ones?
In reality, a physical book takes around $1-2 to produce.
If this is true, however, then why are they priced a lot more than that?
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Everything makes sense when you imagine all of the people who helped make the book who need paying.
For one, the author has to get their agreed royalty cut from every sale.
From there, the editors, proofreaders, cover artists, and marketers all need to be paid.
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These obligations don’t leave the publisher with a lot of money for themselves.
Of course, all of the above are involved in making the ebook, too.
Physical books get sold to retailers at around half the list price.
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The retailer can then sell them for whatever they like.
However, ebooks utilize the agency model when sold.
Instead of letting the retailer choose the price, the publisher states what they’re selling for.
The publisher gets 70 percent of each transaction, and the retailer gets the remaining 30 percent.
Unlike with physical books, Amazon has no control over the price of ebooks.
This constraint is the reason ebooks sometimes cost more than paperbacks.
Instead of selling the hardcover for the list price, Amazon choose to sell it at under $20.
They can’t touch the ebook price, so that stays the same.
As such, the paperback will cost less than the ebook.
This convenience often means that invested readers don’t care about the price.
Ebooks, however, don’t share this problem.
As long as youback your data up correctly, ebooks can technically last forever.
Ebooks, however, tend to be a single purchase.
With the popularity of ebooks, the focus moved away from bookstores and towards online stores.
As such, big publishers aren’t fond of making their ebooks cheaper than paperbacks.
By keeping the price of ebooks high, publishers keep paperbacks as a valid option for readers.
That way, the world of physical books isn’t under threat of becoming extinct due to ebooks.
Physical books, newspapers, and magazines are all exempt from VAT in the UK.
Digital products, however, aren’t.
Which means that in the future, additional charges like these will make a big difference to prices.
However, there’s a lot more to ebook pricing than the methods used to distribute them.
These elements of publishing explain why ebook prices equal—and sometimes outprice—physical books.
Are you tired of paying a lot of money for ebooks?
Then try visiting thesefree ebook download sitesinstead.
As a bonus, check out thisfree ebook for how to become a better negotiator!
