How much are you willing to pay for an Ebook

[Zaida Gearbox]

I got this off an author's FB page.... How much are you willing to pay for an Ebook. Apparently some people are like 99 cents.

My answer - since I usually only buy non-fiction books in book format - is that it depends on how much I like the author and how much I want to read the book.

 

[Free]

I recently paid $20-21 for an ebook because I sort of needed it, and I didn't want to pay the $58 it would have cost to get it in physical form.

So, $20-21 so far.

 

[Ann Launay]

Generally $8 or less, but above that I look at the paperback price. If they want as much or more for the ebook as the paperback, it's probably going to be a no.

 

[Cristiano]

Same as Ann. If they try to price it at or above the printed price, I'll pass. You don't actually own the ebook and it costs them far less. It should not have parity pricing with print.

 

[Fionalein]

$50 to $100 if it includes a POD copy

0 else, I am a firm believer in physical backups.

 

[Beebo Brink]

For fiction that I consider entertainment, I'll snap up anything in the $1-3 range that is moderately well-written and catches my interest. I get picky for any title over $8 and balk around the $10-12 range. That's a price I would only pay for a few of my very favorite authors.

For non-fiction books, especially science topics, I'm willing to go higher. I'll pay up to $15-18 if it's a really well-written book about a technical subject that interests me (like climate change or anthropology).

 

[Noodles]

For the most part I won't pay more than $5 for an ebook. The lower the price, the more likely I am to impulse buy it if it looks interesting.

I also often won't buy a book if it's part of a series (usually Vol 1s) and the entire series isn't on sale. Because it usually means the later books will never be on sale. On the opposite end, I will impulse buy entire series but not usually for more than $3/book.

 

[Romana]

I think 4 or 5 is the most I've ever paid, and that because I wanted to support the author.

 

[Sid]

Half the price of the paperback version at most.

 

[Brenda Archer]

I don’t buy fiction very often. My nonfiction reading can veer into academic and technical titles that cost more, so I have to really pace my buying (and have a huge wish list).

I can’t afford to accumulate physical books (I will probably have to give most of them away if I move), but if I can save a *lot* of money on used, I will consider it.

Right now I’m still working on my Kindle backlog so I’m trying to wait. There are still things that are a buck or so and I will just grab them.

 

[Fionalein]

Half the price of the paperback version at most.

Sadly I found that not true in academic textbooks, for usually ten to twenty bucks more I can get a hardcover...

And some books are more than reading materials, they are statements, there was a time when managers decided to put "The Universe in a Nutshell" iinto tehir offices tos how of how smart they are. I decided I will one day do that too, but I will place the Landau Lifshitz and the Feyman Lectures. The only book you should never place on an office shelf are Sun Ze and Machiavelli. Placing them you can only loose. Best case they do nothing, worst case you cannot live up to your idols, either way they give away a message that you are untrustworthy.

 

[Maggy Hazelnut]

I have over 4300 ebooks for my Kindles right now. I've rarely paid over $5 for one of them. Most I've paid from $0 - $3 for since every day I check my emails from Bookbub, Freebooksy, Bargain Books, EarlyBird Books, etc. Plus I get many on loan from the library (Overdrive) & Kindle Unlimited. I'm an avid reader but poor so I do everything I can to keep my book costs at a minimum yet still have plenty of great books to read. I don't think I've ever paid the full original asking price of an ebook.

 

[Noodles]

I wanted to add that I get a ton of ebooks from bundles, which are usually $15-20 for 10 or so books. I most often buy from HumbleBundle.com, but I have also bought from Story bundle.com, Drive Through RPG, and a couple of times from Bundle of Holding.

Most of these books though are non-fiction type books. Technical books or tabletop game books, sometimes comics (which would be fiction).

I have a whole sorted library of DRM Free books from these purchases.

Which kind of brings up another side note. I would be willing to pay a bit more if the ebook is DRM Free.

 

[Rose Karuna]

For educational and reference books that required a lot of research I'll pay the same amount as I would have for the hard copy. For fiction with the exception of Stephen King, I generally won't go over 11.99. Most ebooks I buy are in the 99 cent to 5.99 range. Even if the book is not in hard or soft cover the author still had to write it, people probably did research for it and it certainly had to be edited and possibly illustrated. There is value in that.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

If I want to read the book then I'm willing to pay whatever is required. Mostly I buy things DRM free so I'm not that concerned about the ownership issue with ebooks. If a book is really pricey I'll wishlist it and save it into EreaderIQ so I get notified when it's on sale. I also make a point of following authors on EreaderIQ when I'm interested in reading or see them getting good reviews. Then I can try one of their books when it's more affordable and see if I want to get more.

There are good online libraries with ebooks now, and audiobooks. Also magazines and comics. My local library lets folk recommend books through Overdrive so if I really want to read something I'll sometimes recommend it and it's automatically checked out to me when it comes in. Most of the books I've requested have come through which has saved me a fair bit on textbooks and the like. They also tend to get a lot of the pricier new bestsellers in automatically and I just need to put a hold on them when they're available.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

I pay the same as I pay for a print book, but only if I can break the DRM so I'm not at risk of having it taken away from me.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

Has anyone ever had an eBook taken away from them? Just wondering since so many mentioned that possibility. We have a space issue at my house. Hubman has a HUGE collection of books. I had a huge collection of books before I got married, but was obliged to get rid of most of them when I moved from VA to PA, and now my physical book collection occupies one small book case that is behind my chair as if they are something to be ashamed of. I still prefer to buy non-fiction or any book I'm likely to refer back to a lot in physical form because flipping around in an eBook is a PITA.

The other challenge is - we do not have a light in our bedroom. I know most of you are thinking, "so buy a lamp." We tried that and it kept getting unplugged. So, I NEED something that has a built in light if I'm going to read after dark. Reading in the living room is pretty much a non-option for me. There are too many distractions.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Has anyone ever had an eBook taken away from them?

I don't think I've had an individual book taken away by an operating publisher (but it might have happened without me noticing it), but they do republish books now and then with slightly different content, and other people have reported losing books.

The bigger issue is keeping the servers up. When Fictionwise went under/got bought/whatever it was they kept the servers up for a while. Most of the Fictionwise books I bought were DRM free, a few were protected, but I managed to download them in a format that I could decrypt. It wasn't the best format, a lot of markup got left behind, but I did keep the content. Shortly thereafter they gave us a "free" account at a competitor (or maybe the company that bought them) and "let" us keep the books that publisher had in their catalog, which didn't include any of mine. I have seen reports of other "mergers" that resulted in content loss.

Same thing that happened to people who bought music from publishers who used Microsoft's "Plays for Sure" scheme. Microsoft shut down the servers and people lost access to their music.

The other challenge is - we do not have a light in our bedroom. I know most of you are thinking, "so buy a lamp." We tried that and it kept getting unplugged. So, I NEED something that has a built in light if I'm going to read after dark. Reading in the living room is pretty much a non-option for me. There are too many distractions.

I use a regular Android tablet. I do have a few books from work that require me to use an iPad, and it's a really nice screen, but it's too much hassle to copy files to the iPad so I can read them there without going through proprietary shenanigans.

 

[Kokoro Fasching]

I read 1-3 books a day, so always try to go for the cheaper books/kindle unlimited. But if the author is known and good, I'll go up to the paperback price.

What I dislike most is when a book is re-issued/dropped/changed, you can't get the about blurb on the e-book you have - it no longer exists. You still have the e-book, but the blurb is no longer available.

 

[Free]

I read 1-3 books a day