Journal: Price-point Dilemma
Electronic books are too freaking expensive. That's been my opinion for years, and I've had absolutely no reason to revise my estimation. In fact, if anything I've been too soft. This was seriously brought home to me recently when I started searching for electronic books to get and discovered that the vast majority of them are more expensive than the actual honest-to-god dead-tree paperback versions of the exact same books. What the fuck? I mean, really. What the fuck?
Sure, I know maybe just a little about the costs that go into a book, but the one thing I know for an absolute certainty is that electronic books don't have anything resembling the overhead that goes into their dead-tree brethren. In fact, they've got even less of an excuse to be so much more freaking expensive than the dead-tree versions because the pricing structure is far more favorable to the publisher. When you have to give slightly more than half the cover price to the bookstore, you have to charge a little more to cover your costs. However, when you get to keep more than two-thirds of the cover price, there is absolutely no reason to charge more than when you get less than half.
Makes me sick. Makes me physically ill. It's price gouging. It's taking advantage of the audience. It's not supply and demand. I'm sorry, it's not. You're not stuck with too much or too little inventory if you don't hit the pricing sweet-spot because there is no physical inventory to have too much or too little of. It's charging what the market will bear, pure and simple. It's the reason why books from famous authors cost more; even though, there is absolutely no fucking reason why the famous author needs more money. They're already fucking rich. The publisher is fucking rich. They could cut the price. No reason to charge so much just because the people will pay. I don't mean "can" pay; I mean "will" pay regardless of whether or not they "can" afford it. Have a heart you fucking rich bastards and be nice to your audience who don't necessarily have the disposable income to spend on your shit. You do realize that some of your audience are choosing your shit over things they need, right? They're not all as rich as you, you slime-coated, flee-infested, shit-encrusted leaches. [...]
