Now me personally I was never a huge reader and then things like digital books and comics came out and me being a tech person it was perfect. If I wanted to read I could get the book from my own home and not clutter my place up with books. There was a time when digital books were reasonably priced and people were happy to pay. Well rumblings are starting grow with the fact that 7 top publishing companies have agreed on the agency price model. This model will allow their books to be in the Apples iBookstore and with the iPad 2 launching most publishers would feel out in the cold if they couldn?t present their books on the Apple platform. This agency model if you are unaware gives 70% profit to the publisher while the rest goes to the retailer. This does also allow for the publisher to set the price and not the retailer and in some case in Europe there are investigations on whether or not this is actually constituted as price fixing and the work of an illegal cartel.
So there is a very big deal that goes along with what was said above. The pricing is somewhat unfair to the consumer. I have pulled some information that might be shocking to you readers. Here is a breakdown of a few books via digital purchase or from buying from your local bookstore.
Title: The Kite Runner
Digital: $12.99
Paper back: $7.81
Title: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Digital $12.99
Paperback $9.40
So no paper, no glue, shipping or bindings needed and yet the digital is more expensive? That sounds like extreme greed to me and when people see this type of greed going on other people step in and start pirating these products. We have seen it with music and movies and now books might be the next thing to be pirated. It something to keep an eye on, will this work or will it be a bigger issue coming down the pike with how the publishing companies are pricing these books. Only time will tell if greed will win out on this, I think it most likely will only due to convenience and the owners of Kindles and iPad?s will pay more for the convenience of downloading a book which doesn?t take up space and you have to typically go to a store to get.