The reasons behind high prices of e-books – Part 1

Since the release of the original Kindle from Amazon in 2007, e-book business has taken a new turn. Although it is not a new category in literature, e-books have been in the market since the 90s but they were limited to laptops and desktops. However, the new Kindle, e-reader, pushed the edge of the envelope in the book reading segment.

This however, has had a mixed effect on the book publishers. Since the worldwide spread general notion is that e-book is paperless and all bits and bytes, even that on very small scale, the books should cost less or next to nothing.

This should explain the publisher’s response: The might papyrus costs next to nothing in a book. The cost of an e-book can be divided into the following parts; Author advances, design, marketing, publicity, office space, and staff.

Amazon emerged as the major player in reshaping book industry at the turn of the century. Its innovative designs to sell both print and e-books have changed the entire business modules all over the world.

However, increase the effect on e-books two fold after the advent of Amazon Kindle five years ago. This had immense ramifications on the print media as well.

After the release of Kindle, book publishers were forced to act on ‘wholesale’ model in which the publisher sets the price of the e-book, let’s $20. It negotiates with e-book seller, in this case and in most cases, Amazon, and receives 50 percent of price, $10.

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Posted by Usman Khalid on Apr 16 2012. Filed under Sci-Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.