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price of ebooks and why get a reader

TheComputerator 7th Dec 2009

"4. The eBooks cost as much as a real book. This is ridiculous. I can understand the price on a real book since you've got a physical product, but when all the publisher/distributor has to do is download a bunch of bits and bytes why do you have to pay as much as if you got a real book?"

I buy almost exclusively ebooks these days (can you say font enlargement?). They are about 20% less than dead tree books. The cost of printing and distributing a book is not that high compared to the cost of creating the book from author to typesetter so the discount from paper to electrons isn't going to be that large either.

I don't have a dedicated reader; I read on my laptop, netbook or Palm TX. Other than eInk, there is no reason for me to buy yet another device. Mine will read almost any format just by getting the appropriate reader software (free). I can also get my ebooks from any provider. Someday, perhaps, when ebooks are ubiquitous, I'll get a dedicated reader. Until then I'm happy with what I have.