I've heard that some Star Trek novels are available for the kindle at these prices. I tried searching for Star Trek in the Kindle section of Amazon and it turns out many people have tagged things Star Trek that aren't, plus graphic novels and gaming materials are jumbled up with the novels. Anyone have any search tips, or any novels which they enjoyed and feel like talking about which are now being sold cheaply for the Kindle?
Kindle Trek Novels $2.99 and under
- Thread starter David F. Weisma
- Start date
I have not found any Trek kindle novels that cost $2.99? On average they are $7.99. I did buy Killing Blow for $5.99 though. That is the cheapest price I have found for a Trek book.
I wish the prices for out of print trek ebooks would go down. I'm all for paying the same price for an ebook as I do a new book, but I'm not paying full price for something I can pick up for a few bucks in a used book store. I would probably pay for electronic versions of old trek books if the price was decent.
I'm not.
I don't agree with it, since I'm not having to pay for paper publishing expenses, but I am willing to pay for it.
I'm willing to pay up to either the paper retail price (not list price), or for agency titles 75%* of the paper list price, whichever is lower.
If the price is higher than that, I might buy the print version but am more likely to either borrow the book from the library or just not read it at all.
* This is about the price where the publisher is making the same amount of gross income as they would for a print copy. Assuming a 50% discount for the retailer - which if anything is high, at least based on the discounts that the bookstore I was working at received - versus a 30% agent split, that works out to 71.4% of the list price. Which I then round up because I'm lazy.
the cost of actually printing the book is negligible in the overall cost of producing the thing in the first place. The lion's share of the cost of the book itself is taken up by paying the author, cover artist(s), and the marketing campaign, and so on.
The only reason eBooks are still priced as high as they are by the publishers is that they are still living in a dreamworld, unable to see that the old traditional model of publishing is dead. Like a zombie actually, dead but still living, in a sense of the word.
^Don't your two paragraphs contradict each other? Given that, as you correctly state, the costs involved in printing a paper book are a negligible part of the whole cost, doesn't it follow that e-books should cost nearly as much as print books?
I have a hard time rounding down the materials, printing and labor, transportation, and storage costs to ZERO, though. Gotta be money there somewhere, even if it's not a huge number.
And there's not really a corresponding cost for the ebooks, either. I guess there's a cost to format them for release, but there's already gotta be some format to get it to the printer, can't be much harder to convert to various standards (pdf, mobi, whatever). About 2 seconds and a mouse click on my home pc, imagine you've got dedicated software that handles it just fine.
If you can sell the paper book to the reseller for 25% off, you're still making the desired profit at $6 a book. The extra $2/book is the reseller covering their costs (storefront, storage, labor, whatever) and still making a profit there too. Since THAT'S the real cost that the ebook is eliminating, why shouldn't they be priced closer to $6 than $8? I'm sure Amazon still wants a cut, but there's no shipping, only gotta store 1 copy, etc, so their costs can't be as high...
And there's not really a corresponding cost for the ebooks, either. I guess there's a cost to format them for release, but there's already gotta be some format to get it to the printer, can't be much harder to convert to various standards (pdf, mobi, whatever). About 2 seconds and a mouse click on my home pc, imagine you've got dedicated software that handles it just fine.
If you can sell the paper book to the reseller for 25% off, you're still making the desired profit at $6 a book. The extra $2/book is the reseller covering their costs (storefront, storage, labor, whatever) and still making a profit there too. Since THAT'S the real cost that the ebook is eliminating, why shouldn't they be priced closer to $6 than $8? I'm sure Amazon still wants a cut, but there's no shipping, only gotta store 1 copy, etc, so their costs can't be as high...
Economy of scale -- when you're printing thousands of books, the cost per book is mere pennies. So yeah, there's a difference, but it's a pretty small one.
All I can say is, Amazon and B&N are offering the e-book editions of my upcoming Only Superhuman for less than half the list price for the hardcover (though the hardcover itself is at 59% of list price). If anything, I get the impression that Amazon is discounting e-book prices rather sharply in order to promote Kindle sales (and B&N doesn't want Amazon to undercut them so they set the same prices).
And people are actually paying it? Hmm. Wonder why?
The author would be entitled to a royalty on each eBook sold, so it's definitely not "pure profit" for the publisher. I assume the hosting download sites get some $$$ too.
I just did a quick search and the bottom price line for the majority of Trek novels is $5.99 for the Kindle. Many of the SCE installments are priced at the same, while many of the SCE Omnibi are $8.99. It's curious. (And then there's the egregious price gouging on the Slings and Arrows series. $6.99 for stories that are 1/4 to 1/8 the length of novels at the same price point!?)
I didn't do too exhaustive a search, but I went through about 30 Kindle search pages, searching for Star Trek sorted by price.
The OP may have been directed to many of the Star Trek comics listed in the Kindle store, which are $1.99. As well, I did stumble across an adult parody series of Kindle books called Sex Trek which are exactly at the price point the OP said, $2.99.
ADDENDA: I just stumbled across these two oddities. The Starship Trap has two kindle versions, a $5.99 version which you stumble upon by searching for the title, and a $4.50 one you find by searching for Star Trek in the Kindle store and sorting by the same price. The same thing occurs with Dwellers in the Crucible, $5.99 and $3.16.
I didn't do too exhaustive a search, but I went through about 30 Kindle search pages, searching for Star Trek sorted by price.
The OP may have been directed to many of the Star Trek comics listed in the Kindle store, which are $1.99. As well, I did stumble across an adult parody series of Kindle books called Sex Trek which are exactly at the price point the OP said, $2.99.
ADDENDA: I just stumbled across these two oddities. The Starship Trap has two kindle versions, a $5.99 version which you stumble upon by searching for the title, and a $4.50 one you find by searching for Star Trek in the Kindle store and sorting by the same price. The same thing occurs with Dwellers in the Crucible, $5.99 and $3.16.
Tor is discounting the ebook. As they are one of the price-fixing publishers, Amazon has no authority regarding pricing the ebook.
Oh, okay. Thanks for the correction.
Christopher, a couple questions:
Most ebooks sell for $7.99 while The Struggle Within sells for $6.99. What accounts for the difference? Is it because less production and editorial costs in the creative process or because of it only being an ebook with no printing expenses?
Only Superhuman is going to be hardcover? If so, why does a superhero novel of yours get a hardcover printing whereas none of your trek titles do? I would think if Only Superhuman is expected to sell at harcover prices, some of your trek books should as well.
Most ebooks sell for $7.99 while The Struggle Within sells for $6.99. What accounts for the difference? Is it because less production and editorial costs in the creative process or because of it only being an ebook with no printing expenses?
Only Superhuman is going to be hardcover? If so, why does a superhero novel of yours get a hardcover printing whereas none of your trek titles do? I would think if Only Superhuman is expected to sell at harcover prices, some of your trek books should as well.
The Struggle Within is $5.99.
Different companies with differing priorities would be the reason why one publishes novels in hardcover while another does not. Only Superhuman is being published by TOR not Pocket Books.
^Yep, my bad. It is $5.99.
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