Something is just plain wrong here. I have been listening to Taleb's "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable". A very interesting book, by the way. Recommended.
Anyhow, this is about price. I bought the audiobook from Audible.com so I could listen to it during transit times, etc. I paid C$15 for it. Expensive for a download I thought, but Amazon wanted US$21 for their audio download. The audio CD? US$26 !!
I decided to check out what a paper copy of the book would cost. I wasn't surprised to find it on amazon.ca for more money, but not too bad at $20 for the paperback. But I don't have any more space on my bookshelf.
So I looked for an ebook. I was shocked to find the price to be US$27 at several sites. That is insane. Finally, what about amazon/kindle? US$12. Much more reasonable, but you have to buy a Kindle. Sony's price is the same.
I think there is a bit of room here for price competition. I can't see any reason why the electronic download should not be universally half-price compared to the original media. This is somewhat the way it is for music. Perhaps libraries provide price competition on the paper?
One other thing I noticed. It doesn't seem to be general practice for a retailer to offer multiple media formats for an item - the one exception being the Kindle view on amazaon. Surprisingly the reverse was not the case. The regular amazon entry for the hardcover book did not reveal the other options available. A missed opportunity.
Friday, February 13, 2009
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