Yeah, the problem with Amazon’s initial pricing model was that they were making losses on each individual sale in order to push their e-reader and gain the majority market share on the hardware. Which means that a lot of people feel e-books should be around the $10 mark. And the publishers don’t agree, leading to the situation we have now. There is definitely a sweet-spot to be ascertained, but I think it will be around the $10 mark, with ‘specials’ leading to a $6 or $7 bargain range.

Ooh, a discounted e-book if you already had the normal book would be very good. Not sure how on Earth they’d enforce it, but that’s what marketers are paid for, right? :P

Frankly, I think ebooks should be ‘cheap’ in general because people already have to pay hundreds for ebook readers anyway. Cheaper ebooks will be an added benefit for those of us who can’t afford one of the readers.

That being said, I’m also a writer, and the prices I have seen for ebooks are often too low, in my opinion. I’m certainly not demanding ebook authors be paupers simply because of the media they choose to publish in.

I don’t have exact prices off the top of my head because I haven’t had a proper, long sit down and think about it. I also don’t have any truly creative pricing schemes either… I can only think that if you bought a specific author’s ebook at full price, you could get a previously published book at some discounted price.

As for genre… I stopped paying attention to that a long time ago. Haha. With all the mashups, it’s better to just read the synopsis instead of trying to decipher or give labels.

I think that the marketers responsible for the business of selling books are the people that benefit the most from the genre classifications. Most people I talk to couldn’t care less if a book is considered one genre or another, as long as it’s a good read.

I doubt many readers, when asked ‘what kind of books do you read’, answer with a string of their preferred genres. In fact, that’s possibly the most dangerous question to ask an avid reader.

Then again, I can see how genre/classification comes in handy when it comes to selling books. We need overarching stereotypes to function sanely. Especially when attempting to describe what is, essentially, a creative art.