(2007-03-31) Stross Ebook Market

Charlie Stross on the broken EBook market. Right now, many of the largest publishers charge a cover price for ebooks that is 80% to 100% of the Hard Cover price. Virtually nobody except BaenBooks (and now a couple of other publishers who've dipped a toe in the Webscription market, and some self-publishers) is even thinking about trying to establish what an ebook is really worth in the market. We know roughly what it costs to produce a book, and we can point to the areas where ebooks are cheaper than paper editions (no dead trees and ink, for one thing; no warehousing or distribution for another) and more expensive (downloads, website maintenance). But we don't really know what an ebook is worth to the readers, because the market that could give us meaningful FeedBack on pricing has been strangled in the crib. My take on ebooks is that they are - and should be seen as - the cheapest form of disposable literature... And the ConsumerElectronics industry will not cut off its own nose to spite its face by producing an ebook reader for $20, if it can produce one with extra bells and whistles that sells for $350. We've had the tech for a $20 (or $50, anyway) ebook reader for a decade; it would resemble a grey-scale Palm Pilot, albeit without even the PDA functionality... We might see such a device (at $200) take off in the Book Club market. But 80% of readers don't do Book Club-s. I've seen my Book Club sales, and they're piss-poor (except in France, which is different).

August'2007 update: his UK publisher is providing his AtrocityArchvives as an EBook (ugh, with DRM) for half the paperback price. (In the comments, he notes I get five times as much money for a hardback as for a paperback but doesn't note how much he gets per EBook.)

Dec'2007 update: he doesn't like the Kindle. He does like the Nokia N810.