ibooks WAY over priced..or is it me?

Hi Guys, had a little browse through the ibook store ( Uk version) and was literally astounded at the prices they were charging.

Is it me or are they REALLY charging MORE for an ibook than a paper version? i'm thinking an ibook would be way cheaper seeings as there are no distribution costs, materials, warehouse space etc and other overheads. Also, you cannot donate an ibook or loan it to a friend once you have read it...or are my ipad settings screwed up??

if they really are that expensive then i am absolutley amazed that this was acceptable to the ebook buying public.

Ebooks are sold at or above the paper price to the annoyance of buyers, as you usually cannot share the file you have purchased. You own the book, but it isn't your property. Unlike a paper book which can be given to numerous acquaintances.

I'm unsure whether the iPad allows you to use your public library, if you are in the states most libraries have an ebook section.

Here's a link to MobileRead you may find more info and sources there.


MobileRead Forums

Use the Kindle App for iPad. Although still overpriced compared with the paper version, I think they are cheaper than the iBooks versions. Also a lot more choice. I suspect competition will eventually drive the prices down a bit, once iBooks really gets started.

Sadly eReader (formerly Palm Books) say they have no plans for an iPad version of their ebooks reader yet. The iPhone version does work and can be increased in size without much effect on the books' readability. Unfortunately, they have also decided to say 'file not found' when I try to download books which they sold me here in the UK but have since decided are too important to be allowed out of the US - which is just a con. Indeed it is close to fraud. Another reason to use paper books - nobody can come along after you have bought them and say you can't read it any more because foreigners are not worthy to own it. I have a huge number of these ebooks, as I have owned a number of Palm devices in the past, but eReader have just gone down in my opinion. At least Amazon tell you if you can't have a digital copy of a book, even if they are quite happy to sell you a paper version and for a fraction of the price.

Sorry about that, but I feel quite strongly about geographical restrictions on fiction. It is only a novel, not top secret, so why restrict where it can be sold - especially AFTER the customer has bought and paid for it.

On a brighter note, Barnes & Noble say their iPad version should be out soon. Again, their iPhone version can be expanded without seriously affecting the readability of the books.

Don't know if ya'll have much in the Kindle store over there yet, but you will see Amazon dropping the price on a lot of books to match or save maybe $1 here after the paperback version is released. The primary savings on either one of them is in purchasing first run books still only released in the hardback version.

Sounds to me that once the the popularity of "e-books" kicks into gear...and there are at least a handful or more major e-book retailers (and many many smaller ones)...that the cost of e-books will decrease.

It used to cost $4000 dollars for a 22" Apple LCD monitor 10 years ago...now you can buy a 22" LCD monitor for $100-$125 bucks or less!

The price of e-books will decrease!

- Nick

Yes, what will happen is that independent publishers will enter the market with cheaper e-books of sufficient quality to drive down the prices at the majors -- same thing that happened with the App Store itself, really ... it may take a while however as the Publishing Mafia are pretty strong ...

In the meantime, this is your big opportunity to refamiliarise yourself with the best of public-domain and free eBooks. Some great stuff out there ...

I have found travelling classics under the Free Apps to have more than sufficient content you may want to give them a try.

They ARE overpriced. Surely to encourage people to take up the ebook format they should price it a lot lower initially than the difference in production cost of a paperback. They're charging more for an ebook than an actual book????

Project Gutenberg- over 30,000 free ebooks and counting

The Internet Archive with links to approximately 1.8 million books online.

Google Books - some 7 million books for you to search through

manybooks.net - another repository of almost 30,000 free ebooks

even Amazon with their Kindle app has somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 free books currently.

Have not even checked to see how many there are free in iBooks.

I would agree the prices are higher than I would like to see, but to me the bigger issue is the quality. I have bought a number of eBooks from Amazon and iBooks and all of them have "typo's" and scan errors that I would not expect to see in a commercial product.
As an example I am reading the SPQR series and in most cases an italic fl is rendered as a ? or other character symbol. This wouldn't bother me so much in a free book, but I am paying $9.99 USD for the file, which presumably is an electronic version of the print and should have gone through copy editting.

To me this is inexcusable--if you are going to charge a relatively high price for a product then deliver quality commensurate with the cost.