Comments on: Pricing Digital Content http://www.davidderrico.com/pricing-digital-content/ Novels and E-Books by David Derrico, Science Fiction Author Sat, 21 Apr 2012 06:58:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Lloyd Johnson http://www.davidderrico.com/pricing-digital-content/comment-page-1/#comment-31 Lloyd Johnson Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:36:34 +0000 http://www.davidderrico.com/?p=442#comment-31 Way back in the early days of personal computers, programming languages sold for several hundreds of dollars. In 1980 dollars this was a lot of money and pirating was rampant. Borland came along and sold their Pascal program for an unheard of price of about $40 (if memory serves me correctly). For your $40, you also got a paper back manual that was 300 or more pages thick. If you tried to copy it, you would break the binding and destroy it. It was far easier to just buy your own copy. Unfortunately, Borland's products started to become more and more expensive and they really aren't that major a player anymore. I've never heard of anyone photocopying a paperback book. The paper and toner would cost more than simply buying a legitmate copy. With electronic books, I suspect illegal copying and sharing will once again emerge, especially if the books are ridiculously over priced. This doesn't justify copying, but it does explain it. Its still stealing. With reasonable prices for ebooks, I am willing to take my chances on purchasing books that I'm not totally sure I will read, whereas for the more expensive ones, I will make darn sure this is something I will read before I pay for it. As a consumer, I'm all for reasonable priced books. Way back in the early days of personal computers, programming languages sold for several hundreds of dollars. In 1980 dollars this was a lot of money and pirating was rampant. Borland came along and sold their Pascal program for an unheard of price of about $40 (if memory serves me correctly). For your $40, you also got a paper back manual that was 300 or more pages thick. If you tried to copy it, you would break the binding and destroy it. It was far easier to just buy your own copy. Unfortunately, Borland’s products started to become more and more expensive and they really aren’t that major a player anymore.

I’ve never heard of anyone photocopying a paperback book. The paper and toner would cost more than simply buying a legitmate copy.

With electronic books, I suspect illegal copying and sharing will once again emerge, especially if the books are ridiculously over priced. This doesn’t justify copying, but it does explain it. Its still stealing.

With reasonable prices for ebooks, I am willing to take my chances on purchasing books that I’m not totally sure I will read, whereas for the more expensive ones, I will make darn sure this is something I will read before I pay for it.

As a consumer, I’m all for reasonable priced books.

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