Much to my surprise, I clicked on the Borders UK website this morning, and saw a category for ebooks. My response:
‘Oooo, finally! This is good. More selection perhaps for us UK buyers.’
*Scrolls down for the romance section, and clicks*
*head desk*
‘Noooooooo! Why Borders, why? Why do you do a Waterstones, and not offer genre romances, and put out chick lit, and women’s fiction as romance?’
*Clicks back dejectedly to the main ebook page, and Epic fail!’
Lees Child’s Nothing to Lose priced at £17.99. WTF?
Not only is it silly, but insane. If you go to the Book Depository, you can get the same book in hardback for £12.09. Tell me, do these corporate business’ think their customers are stupid? Do they know we shop around for the cheapest price, and people who buy ebooks, are probably more than willing to pay cheaper for a hardback, and heck, even cheaper for the paperback version, which is £5.57 at the Book Depos.
I’m using Lee Child as an example. There is Karin Slaughter’s Fractured, £17.99.
On the Whsmith Ebookshop, Fractured is priced at £5.24.
Dear book goddess, don’t these bloody retail super stores actually do research before they put out their price lists. Seriously, I’m actually pinching myself to make sure I’m seeing this correctly, and it’s not my iron supplement pills that are giving me side affects.
I’ll let you folks see for yourself:
Karin Slaughter, Fractured. Borders price.
Karin Slaughter, Fractured. Whsmith ebook price.
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Oh that just stinks. Such a high then the low.
Yup, it stinks indeed!
What stinks even more, is the geographical rights on certain titles in the US.
I went to go purchase Not Quite A Husband by Sherry Thomas at Books on Board, who had it for the cheapest, and they wouldn't let me.
feh! An ebook should be cheaper than a paper back and certainly much cheaper than a hard cover book.
DianeG
I've seen this before. Publishers keep trying to put articles out there arguing the cost behind e-books. It's a joke. They seem to think readers are idiots who can't comprehend that with e-books there is no print cost, there is no warehousing cost, there is no return cost, and really there shouldn't be a mass-buying discount offered to bookstores either because the supply of e-books is unlimited.
I refuse to buy an e-reader until I can buy e-books for at most the same as I spend on a paperback. And that's for "new" books. Stuff that has been out for ages? I expect the price to go down.
LOL, we all share your pain MA. It seems that the more cash they can try to get they will.
Like Julie Im waiting until everything comes down to a more reasonable price, however I prefer to have paper in my hands but I'd use an ereader for holiday or long trips. After all how many more books can you get in your case that way.
(At least one hardcopy of a book would also be with me in case of power failure.)
Incidently I think that E-Readers along with other devices should have a solar recharge pack. Yeah thats right, charge the damn things through the use of the sun whilst in those nice climates that have them.
Borders is having some major financial issues and now I guess we all know why! What are they thinking? I have to say, though, that the most reasonably priced e-books I've found are over at Fictionwise.com, which offers steep discounts for best sellers.
OMG! Okay, I have to confess. I'm in the US, so I had to use an iPhone app to convert this for me. Here, that's like $26.65! That's overpriced for a hardback, much less an ebook! What the hell, Borders?
le sigh. that's a fail.
Sheer idiocy. It makes no sense at all.