http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/Review.aspx?page=Review&reviewid=1322476


I figure, coming here and other boards to complain about the ebook price increase won't actually help. E-mailing customer service is only going to be read by one person. So my new strategy, I'm going to mention it in reviews. I'm going to review any book I want to buy or do buy but not from BN. The review is going to mention how disappointed I am with the price of the book and why I will shop elsewhere until they get it right.

Feel free to join me.

Frank if your planning to start a consumer's group to pressure book publishers to lower the prices of electronic books I'd be more then happy to sign up. However Barnes & Noble is currently paying the same price to sell an electronic book as to sell the physical book. How is your negative reviews of the book going to change that?

Would you be better off contacting the people who actually have the power to change this?

www.hoovers.com/company/Random_House_Inc/cyxfki-1-1njea1.html

More power to you.

We don't have the power through individual contact. Public acknowledgement is needed. If BN felt the pressure it would run uphill to the publishers.

Interesting thought, I'd probably definitely say something when the price of the eBook is >= the price of the cheapest physical book. Publishers aren't paying manufacturing costs, so why should they push that artificial cost to consumers. I'll keep this in mind when a book hits that criteria, otherwise I don't mind the publisher setting the price they want.

My philosophy:
eBook should always be 60%-75% the price of cheapest available retail price of a physical copy. (Notice not MSRP)
Take This Book
Current Retail price is $18.66 (not the $28 MSRP which no one ever has to pay...at least in the US). This book should sell in eBook format somewhere around $11.20 to $13.99 right now.
As the book ages, this retail price will drop. You'll probably be able to get the Hardcover for what B&N lists as the Member Price: $16.79. In this case the eBook price would also drop to $9.99 to $12.59.
When the standard Paperback is released, this becomes the cheapest available physical copy and the price will be somewhere around: $11.99 Based on this similar book. So that would mean that the eBook again drops to $7.19 to $8.99.
And finally when the Mass Market Paperback is released, the cheapest available physical copy will drop again to say $9.99 (and often later to somewhere around $7.99) the eBook would again drop to $5.99 to $7.49 (or $4.79 to $5.99).

So even if the publishers chose the 75% route, they'd still get a pretty penny for their books. $13.99 to $12.59 to $8.99 to $7.49 to $5.99. And they'd still get the most money out of the top 5%-10% that buy the book immediately upon release. I think they'd get quite a bit more money on this tiered system, because I have bought and read a number of books that I would have never bought and read if it wasn't for Half-Price Books (ie used bookstore). And the publishers see none of that money. At least this way they'd still be getting a cut.

I agree, ebooks should always be a fraction of the cheapest available paper copy. It really burns me to see I can get the paperback for $5.99 or so and the ebook costs more than $10.

Publishers and Booksellers better get their act together, there are people with money ready to spend but we aren't stupid either

Yeah, I wish publishers and retailers should see eBooks for what they can be. And what is that? A way to grab back some profits from the used book sellers. I for one would stop buying physical copies (unless it is a super awesome book that I want to have on a shelf), if the eBook price is comparable to the used book price.