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Comment by loewenskind | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with the pricing? I wish ebooks were cheaper, but honestly? I'd be willing to pay at least physical-book price because ebooks are more convenient in every way. They stream to all my devices so no matter where I am I can read if I want to. I have all my (e)books on my devices so they aren't taking up a wall or two in my house. I'm not a free market "true believer" [1], but pricing is based on what something's worth, not what it costs to produce.

I agree with epynonymous though; it would be nice if I could get a discount for books I already own. On the other hand, I might just apply this discount myself by selling my physical ones and buying the ebook versions.

[1] That is, I don't think it's the solution to every problem.

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pricing is based on what something's worth

Right, and you can resell a physical book. It has additional value as an asset in itself rather than as a non-transferrable license.

That's really my main pain point. Paying more, for something I cannot transmit to my son or friends, really is currently unacceptable for me.

Complain to Amazon who is taking 40% of the cover price and restricting you.

I'm sure publishers likely love it, but read inside the cover of any book. Your right to resell it is enshrined in law (as long as you haven't destroyed it). Publishers have survived with books being traded and handed around. I'm sure they'd be fully satisfied if eBooks only had DRM to force the book to pass to someone else (IE not copying but truly transferring), as the industry has done exemplary with it.

Also, I can routinely find used books for $1 at garage sales. I bought the entire Ender series and Mars trilogy in almost mint condition for less than $1 a book as I couldn't move my collection with me when I immigrated to Canada. If cost was the true selling price for me on a book, I can get a lot of good quality books for a lot cheaper than anything on the open market, especially ebooks even when Amazon does ridiculously discount them.

Almost nobody really does this, so the economic value of resaleability can't be huge.

I like to think I get a decent amount of goodwill from friends by giving/lending books to them.

This generates additional sales of the books as I often end up buying additional copies once I forget who I lent a book to - I'm on my fourth copy of A Fire Upon The Deep.

There's a saying that goes something like: never lend a book, always give it.

"Almost nobody really does this" is true for paperbacks and novels, but textbooks and other reference material do hold a huge resale value and are resold all the time.

The hordes of people reselling books on Amazon Marketplace don't convince me of your argument. I've sold quite a few books over the years but have given just as many away to charity shops (who make money from them). So even if I don't get the value back directly, I at least get the value of them acting as charitable donations. I also give away most books I'm given to review to learning developers who could benefit from them. I can't do any of that with an e-book. No biggie, but it reduces their monetary value to me.

The main problem I have with ebooks is that a lot of the conversions are really shoddy bits of work - my Kindle copy of Surface Detail (by Iain M Banks) being the worst, lots of spaces missing between sections and inappropriate hyphenation.

Have you looked at ebook pricing recently? Often they cost more than the paperback, and sometimes more than the hardcover.

If I don't already have the book I would pay more for it in ebook format (provided the conversion is good). It's handier for me.

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