While ebooks generally cost
less than their printed counterparts, the country will first have to enact viable copyright acts that seek to protect the interests of those who invest in this sector.
«Setting a price for a Kindle book that is
higher than its print counterpart makes no sense,» said Russ Grandinetti, the vice president of Kindle content for Amazon, to the New York Times.
Of the 1,420 respondents who were polled, 17 percent feel ebooks should be priced 75 percent lower than what printed books cost while 28 percent said ebooks should be priced
half than their printed counterparts.
Also, given that maintaining digital copies is far more cost
effective than their printed counterparts, libraries around the world have taken to digitizing their physical collections in the wake of budget cuts.
This, together with the lack of a pan-Russian book sales network like Barnes & Noble, that creates the perfect setting for ebooks to thrive, and as is evident elsewhere in the world, digital editions are already luring more
readers than their printed counterparts.
But that's nothing compared to the head - scratching that the EU's highest court has caused when they upheld the ruling this week that ebooks were not books, and therefore would be taxed at a higher VAT
rate than their print counterparts.
However, even with ebooks coming much
cheaper than their printed counterparts, a survey to ascertain people's reading habits has revealed that the majority of those polled read books online only if they are free.
Publishers agree to disagree on the vexed issue of pricing, although the majority think digital versions should command a lower
price than their print counterparts: a quarter significantly less.
The courts have held that this was illegal, while publishing houses believe that some ebooks, in fact, should command prices equal — or higher —
than their printed counterparts.
The price of the book must also be less
than its print counterpart.
When digital publishing first began experiencing its major growth spurt only a handful of years ago, many critics argued that a digital book was no better
than its print counterpart, mostly since many e-publishers at that time were simply creating an identical page format on a screen - based devices.
From what I've heard from textbook publishers, digital editions are NOT going to be cheaper
than print counterparts (unlike with trade books, for example) because the high cost of the textbook is supposedly in the paying of the authors.
Currently, German e-books tend to cost about 20 % less
than their print counterparts.
A relatively inexpensive reader, capable of reading multiple file formats, ebooks that are significantly cheaper
than their print counterparts — with those elements in place, more people would use ebooks more often, and the publishers still would do print runs (smaller ones, probably) to accomodate that change (and save trees, as well as their own money).
JK: All of our ebooks are cheaper
than their print counterparts, but only marginally so.
And an ebook, yes, is normally less expensive, as Nourry is pointing out,
than its print counterpart.