View From the Publishing Trenches

It’s interesting how Big Publishing insists on comparing e-book prices to their prices on hardcover and trade paperback books. Many small, indie publishers have fallen into the same trap. Both tend to whine that they can’t make money with e-book prices less than $10.

Hogwash.

Have you noticed that Big Publishing never compares its e-book prices with their…dare I say it?…mass market paperback prices?

Odd that the same publishers who whine that they can’t make a profit selling e-books (Kindle, PDF, iPhone, etc.) seem to find it profitable to sell mass market paperbacks at well under $10.

True, mass market paperbacks are cheap to produce in large quantities.

So are e-books, folks. In fact, the only cost to produce an e-book is the initial conversion costs. There are zero incremental costs, unlike those mass market paperbacks that do carry incremental production costs.

I did an admittedly quick search on Amazon for prices on mass market paperbacks (ignoring those only available from Marketplace sellers and those published by non-US publishers). The highest prices I could find were $7.99 — Random House has some at that price and Thomas Nelson seems to have settled on that price point.

As the publisher at micro-publisher Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC, I urge readers to keep the pressure on those medium and large publishers to stop acting as if the world-as-we-know-it would end if their typical e-book prices fell well below $10.

In fact, e-book prices should be lower than mass market paperback prices by a minimum of $1…and probably more than that.

After all, you don’t need an expensive e-book reader or specialized software for you laptop, desktop, or iPhone to read a mass market paperback.

E-book prices should be lower than mass market paperback prices. Period. End of discussion. Logic should prevail.