# new pricing-anyone notice



## larryb52 (Nov 18, 2009)

I didn't really take notice of it till the most recent and both books I bought were 14.99 but the publishers have amazon, BN and Kobo signed to new pricing and all the newer releases that I was going to buy are now 12.99 to 14.99...now I don't mind paying a bit more but on Novemeber 3 the Connolly book is 14.99 and the hardback is 14.00...is there something I'm missing?


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

larryb52 said:


> *** all the newer releases that I was going to buy are now 12.99 to 14.99...now I don't mind paying a bit more but on Novemeber 3 the Connolly book is 14.99 and the hardback is 14.00...is there something I'm missing?


The big publishers now have their agency pricing with Amazon back, and they're busy trying to protect their paper market with high ebook prices again. Maybe it will work for them. I've seen some posts where people say they'll buy paper if the ebooks are priced that high, but for me there are 3 authors I can think of off hand I'll pay that much for. As for the rest - library.


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## Neoreloaded313 (Jul 30, 2010)

I imagine this will just cause piracy. I know I would never pay that much for an ebook.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

I bought way less, I check libraries first and if its not at library, it goes on a wishlist for library and a wishlist for price reduction. Meanwhile I read books that don't cost that much.


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## hamerfan (Apr 24, 2011)

So that's why some of the books on my wish list have jumped in price.
I hope it works for them, but it's a no-sale here.


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## Andra (Nov 19, 2008)

Even paperbacks have gone back up to $7.99 and $8.99 regularly - the same price as the print version...  It just means that I won't be buying much from the big publishers for a while because I really don't like paying more for a Kindle book than print.  But I also refuse to pay the lower price (Amazon-discounted) for print when I want electronic.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I always put them on my eReaderIQ list for notification when the price drops. As is it will someday.

I've seen one book I had on my list that increased in price by almost 50% in the space of one day. It went from $16.99 to $24.99. No, thanks.

On the other hand, a biography I had on the list went from more than $20.00 to $9.99 over the same period, so I bought it.


Mike


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## GBear (Apr 23, 2009)

My list of Kindle books I want to read that are available from my library currently stands at 65, so this just solidifies my connection to the library to accommodate my reading habit. (I make annual contributions to the library as an appreciative user.)

There are a few publishers that the library won't deal with because their eBooks are so expensive, so I'm limited to some extent. I also may get to the point where I'll want to buy some books to fill in gaps in a series, if the price is low enough. But I'm not going to be tempted to pay $14.99 for a Kindle book anytime soon!


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## The Hooded Claw (Oct 12, 2009)

I hadn't thought it through, but notifications from Ereaderiq have dropped to nearly nothing the past few weeks. Just as well, my backlog will keep me in books for years!


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

The Hooded Claw said:


> I hadn't thought it through, but notifications from Ereaderiq have dropped to nearly nothing the past few weeks. Just as well, my backlog will keep me in books for years!


I have actually noticed this as well. I have a gazillion books I have on ereader, those I wait for price drop and also those I still wait to be kindlelized. Thankfully, even though the kindlelizing notices have come to a screeching halt, much of my list has been put out over the last 3-4 years since I had that list.

But the price reductions used to come in more frequently. In recent times they about dried up. The result is that instead of impulse buying stuff when it comes down in price, I just get it from library outright, or not get it at all. No difference to me, I still get to read the books one way or another one day. Its an odd marketing plan though if you ask me.


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## ct85711 (Jan 25, 2015)

I'm glad all of the authors that I follow closely, are indie authors so they haven't jacked their prices up.  Worst case, I either start working through some of my huge backlog of books that I have yet to read, or renew my library account (haven't used it for over 12 years, need to a new card for the branch here) and start reading from there once again.  Who knows, maybe I'll finish off my library's selection of books once again.


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## geezergas (Nov 8, 2014)

I'm a $9.99 guy, that's what I bought into @ 6 years ago.  I might have to wait a year to get my favorite authors but in the mean time I have dozens of fun authors I turn to into the $ 2-3.00 area.  I can well afford $14.00 books but in this time and age the E Book cost should be a couple bucks.  Its just greed, I'll pay a fair price for an E Book and its almost funny that they all do fall below $10.00 after a while.  When the $14.00 book stop selling they all reach out to the regular people.  Right now the $3.00 authors are making some $$ from me.


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## bordercollielady (Nov 21, 2008)

I just stopped by wondering the same thing.  Seems like more books are priced at $14.99 these days.  Thought those days were behind us.


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## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

We all hoped they were behind us when the DOJ won their suit against Apple and the big 5 publishers but the courts said no agency model for 2 years and that time is up so we're back to it again.  Amazon can no longer set prices.

It ain't fair but it's business and "fair" is a pretty minor objective.  In this case, however, it's also dumb.  This is the publishers way of trying to push us to buy paper books, their main line of business.  And it's probably working somewhat.  The problem is that they're also pushing us into self published books.

I've never paid a lot of attention to whether a book is self published or not but those times I have looked into that I usually find myself reading books from the big guys.  I'm still not looking at that but now I'm watching prices, something I never used to do with books, thanks to their strategy.

I don't make a lot living entirely on social security but I can afford a few books and there are lots of good inexpensive ones available and when I wanted an expensive one it wasn't a big deal because it didn't happen that often and reading is important.  Now, however, I'm watching prices more closely and that means I'm buying more from the little publishers and the self publishers.  I'm still enjoying the books I'm reading.  Nothing's changed there.  It's not costing me much less.  I'm just avoiding the very expensive new prices and that's pretty easy to do.

I guess it's not that easy for people who have to read the latest book but, except for a few authors, that's not something I usually care about.

Barry


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

New releases might be going up but I still get regular price drop alerts from ereaderiq.com on older books.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Honestly, I'm not seeing a huge change.  New releases by major publishers have been 11.99 to 14.99 for some time, it seems to me. There are only a very few authors I'll actually buy at that price. In most cases I can wait until the price drops -- and I am getting nearly daily notices of price drops on older titles -- or I'll put it on hold via one of the libraries I have access to.


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## drafter69 (Mar 21, 2009)

What I fail to understand is how the publishers are so blind to the fact that if I buy the book in digital form only I can read it BUT if I buy the book in printed form I can give it to our block club lending library where hundred may read it for free....  So by forcing me to spend a lot on a printed book all they are doing is hurting their own sales.


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## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

Publishers aren't blind to these facts.  They study all this very carefully.  They see themselves as being in the printed book business and they promote printed books and if they're forced to also be in the ebook business they're going to be very careful to avoid letting that interfere with printed books.

If the major publishers had their way there wouldn't be any ebooks.

Barry


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## Chad Winters (Oct 28, 2008)

barryem said:


> Publishers aren't blind to these facts. They study all this very carefully. They see themselves as being in the printed book business and they promote printed books and if they're forced to also be in the ebook business they're going to be very careful to avoid letting that interfere with printed books.
> 
> If the major publishers had their way there wouldn't be any ebooks.
> 
> Barry


They may look into it but it doesn't mean they draw the right conclusions. If a book I'm interested in is reasonably priced I buy it for my Kindle, if it is not I read something else or buy it from the 1/2 price book store down the street and the publisher makes diddly. I used to trade around paper books with friends a lot and would buy 1 out of 5 books I read, now I buy them all. I don't think I am rare in this.


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## ElaineOK (Jun 5, 2009)

If I thought the authors were getting the bulk of the money, I would pay higher prices for books; but I have too many author friends to believe that.  So, I will stick with my decision not to pay more than $9.99 for a book unless it is for work (and paper would be considerably higher) or getting it now holds significant value for me for some reason.  

Elaine
Oklahoma


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## etexlady (May 27, 2009)

I refuse to pay the prices publishers are demanding for ebooks.  I think I'm going to try Scribd.  I got an offer for 3 months for 99 cents.  They don't really let one look through the titles they offer but surely I can find some that I want to read.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Keep in mind that the high prices are generally only from the 'big' publishers for 'big name' books.  Even second tier books are usually only $9 or $10.  But you can find a plethora of books at $5.99 and lower from independent publishers and small presses. And most of those are in the Kindle Unlimited program -- a subscription is $10 a month. Though I won't be surprised if there's a sale sometime soon where you might be able to get it even more cheaply.


Also, while it seems reasonable to feel like an ebook should cost less than a paper book, keep in mind that for many, they have a higher value in terms of practical utility. 

A person with arthritis doesn't have to hold a big heavy book. 

A person with low vision doesn't have to buy a special copy that costs even more, they can just increase the print size. 

A person who likes to always have choice, can have dozens of books with them all the time. 

A person with allergies doesn't need to worry about the dust that can be a problem with paper books, especially older ones. 

A person with limited access to physical stores can have a new book delivered at a moment's notice.


So the argument can be made that ebooks SHOULD be priced higher!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I find plenty to read on KU plus I like to reread old favorites. Agency pricing really won't affect me at all.


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## SusanCht (Oct 24, 2014)

Tied in with that is how so many of the books on BookBub are now $1.99 and even occasionally $2.99 when back in the good old days they were nearly always 99¢ or free.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

SusanCht said:


> Tied in with that is how so many of the books on BookBub are now $1.99 and even occasionally $2.99 when back in the good old days they were nearly always 99¢ or free.


The lack of freebies has more to do with Amazon changing their policy with associates a few years ago. They basically decided that associates could not have more than x% of their commission coming from freebies. So associates stopped promoting freebies, and therefore authors/publisher stopped making books free, because they weren't getting the same amount of promotion they were before.


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## Tuttle (Jun 10, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> So the argument can be made that ebooks SHOULD be priced higher!


And then there's the argument "just because I'm disabled doesn't mean I should have to pay more for the format of book that works for me"


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## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Also, while it seems reasonable to feel like an ebook should cost less than a paper book, keep in mind that for many, they have a higher value in terms of practical utility.
> 
> A person with arthritis doesn't have to hold a big heavy book.
> 
> ...


Of course you can't sell your ebook when you've finished it, or share it with friends.

You can't use an ebook as a doorstop or swat a fly with it.

Ebooks don't make very good campfires.

When the store buys paper books and we don't buy them from the store they get to return them, which has to be figured into the selling price.

Paper books have to be distributed by large trucks driven by well paid drivers and using expensive fuel. Ebook distribution is paid for by us when we pay our providers.

Ask any kid with a box of crayons if ebooks are worth more than paper books.

Electrons are far more plentiful than trees.

When the printed copies are gone the book stops generating revenue. Ebooks generate revenue for 70 years after the author dies and by that time the publishing lobby will have lobbied to increase that to 700 years.

Barry


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## LaraAmber (Feb 24, 2009)

barryem said:


> Ask any kid with a box of crayons if ebooks are worth more than paper books.


If my kid came near a book with crayons, he'd be too busy trying to cover his butt from a spanking to have an opinion on ebook v paper book.

(He does have coloring apps on the tablet and likes them. They even work with a stylus.)


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## Judith (Jan 5, 2009)

Another thing that annoys me about the price hike is that far too often the ebook is not formatted nicely.  It's like the publishers feel that as ebook readers we don't care about the "looks" of the book.  However, I feel that since I am paying more that the paperback I am entitled to a book that someone cared to format carefully with my reading experience in mind.

I am currently reading "The witch of lime street" and enjoying it, but at the beginning of each section there is a quote that is unreadable.  The publishers chose to take a picture of the page from the hardback or paperback (I assume) and include it in the ebook. Apparently nobody checked what what they were selling is unreadable.

I just finished "Devil in the White City" and almost returned it because the very first page had horrible formatting with words broken up sometimes with one letter on a line.  The rest of the book was fine, but again nobody checked to see how it "looked" on the ebook.

If I'm going to pay higher prices, I will continue to expect better from the publishers.


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## barryem (Oct 19, 2010)

In the early days of ebooks, before they became commercial, we scanned our paper books and shared them on Compuserve and on BBS systems.  They had to be OCR'd because dial-up connections were just too slow to send images.  Even downloading a single picture could take a couple of hours and the quality in those days was poor.

OCR software and scanners weren't very good then either so the book had to be carefully proofed. When you downloaded a book you never expected perfection.  You expected lots and lots of mistakes.  The best you could hope for was that it was easy to read.  Sometimes they weren't.  I've downloaded some pretty badly made Kindle books but none as bad as the best of the early ebooks.

By the way, these were always plain text files.  There was no possibility of bold or italicized text or centering a heading or right justification.  The simple reading programs in those days made Notepad seem pretty sophisticated.

A lot of us read a lot of books that way and we were glad to get them.

I grumble these days when I get a poorly edited book but I'm grumbling more that I had to pay for mistakes than that I have to read them.

Barry


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Judith said:


> Another thing that annoys me about the price hike is that far too often the ebook is not formatted nicely. It's like the publishers feel that as ebook readers we don't care about the "looks" of the book. However, I feel that since I am paying more that the paperback I am entitled to a book that someone cared to format carefully with my reading experience in mind.
> 
> I am currently reading "The witch of lime street" and enjoying it, but at the beginning of each section there is a quote that is unreadable. The publishers chose to take a picture of the page from the hardback or paperback (I assume) and include it in the ebook. Apparently nobody checked what what they were selling is unreadable.
> 
> I just finished "Devil in the White City" and almost returned it because the very first page had horrible formatting with words broken up sometimes with one letter on a line. The rest of the book was fine, but again nobody checked to see how it "looked" on the ebook.


That's strange, I have Devil in the White City and the formatting is fine.


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## Eltanin Publishing (Mar 24, 2011)

One tip regarding wacky formatting. Try downloading the book to your computer desktop and transferring it to your kindle. The file may be different than what you get over wi-fi/3G from Amazon. I bought a book recently from a "big" publisher, and downloaded it to my Voyage. At the top of every screen/page there was a big blank space. Not at the top of each chapter - at the top of every screen, as if the top margin of the kindle was larger. I was afraid I'd have to take matters into my own hand... and "break" and "fix" the book. But then I thought of the "transfer via USB" option. I forget the file format of the book file that was on my kindle. But it wasn't .azw, which is what I got when I transferred via USB. And the .azw3 file didn't have the margin problem.


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## geezergas (Nov 8, 2014)

jmiked said:


> I always put them on my eReaderIQ list for notification when the price drops. As is it will someday.
> 
> I've seen one book I had on my list that increased in price by almost 50% in the space of one day. It went from $16.99 to $24.99. No, thanks.
> 
> ...


E readerIQ has worked well for me. Yesterday at a grocery store paperback section I found a few of the books on my wish list ($14.99 at Amazon) in paperback marked at $9.99. Once a book is formatted into an E Reader system, there is no more cost, its just pure greed. I love my Kindle but the costs are like dealing with medical care, there is absolutely no reason to justify the costs outside greed.


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## A.C Louis (Sep 28, 2015)

Not cool, specially when you want to pair it with the Audible version. Then you have to add some more money to an already-expensive book.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

I just looked over my purchase history and I literally haven't spent more than $5 on a Kindle book since Sep 2014 (and I've bought dozens since then). And those are mostly books from big publishers too, I'm not talking about indie/self pubbed books. I even get alerts for price drops I refrain from buying because I already have over 60 books on my Kindle waiting to be read.


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## hamerfan (Apr 24, 2011)

I sure am missing the days of popular books for $1.99 or so. I keep checking the books on my Amazon wish list for dropped prices.
The list is growing but the prices aren't dropping.


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## tsemple (Apr 27, 2009)

history_lover said:


> I just looked over my purchase history and I literally haven't spent more than $5 on a Kindle book since Sep 2014 (and I've bought dozens since then). And those are mostly books from big publishers too, I'm not talking about indie/self pubbed books. I even get alerts for price drops I refrain from buying because I already have over 60 books on my Kindle waiting to be read.


Only 60? How do you manage such self-control?


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

tsemple said:


> Only 60? How do you manage such self-control?


Lots of practice, lol. Actually, I remind myself that it will take me more than a year to finish the 60 on my Kindle to begin with, and that's not including the ones I might get approved for from NetGalley too.


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