Yet $4.99 sounds about right, heck that’s what I used to pay for paperbacks in my teens, and now you can’t even get those for less than $8 or $9.

PAD

But for that price I want a DRM-free file in a standard format — ideally a CBR or CBZ, with PDF running as a third choice.

And I can see wanting a discount on digital books. But Peter David (I don’t think) is anywhere near that category, and if his charging $5 or whatever helps him pay his mortgage, so what? The fact that the extra $ go to him and not some VP editor is a plus in my opinion.

If you (as a publisher of whatever kind) are making 50% more money (by cutting out distributors) while saving costs (by not printing), I expect (as a buyer) to get some of that benefit in lower prices.

From a practical point of view, Peter David can estimate how big his customer base is from his website stats, and determine his pricing accordingly. He might very well make more profit by charging a higher price and getting fewer sales, especially if he has a small but loyal readership.

At any rate, his pricing decisions have nothing to do with the expense items you listed in your comment at 6. above.

Let’s say for that $7 paperback, one dollar goes to the author and one dollar goes to the publisher and one dollar goes to the retailer. By taking a digital book and pricing it at the exact same price, somebody is absorbing those additional $4 in costs as new profit. If that’s the author, okay, but according to too many sources, including Kristine Kathryn Rusch in her blog, the traditional publisher (and agent) are changing contracts to absorb those profits for themselves, while giving very little of the additional funds to the authors. Providing the same services (publicity, editing, etc) while drastically increasing the profits from those services looks good to accountants and investors wanting those quarterly dividends, but it doesn’t work in the long run. As per most corporate thinking today, it’s short-term wise for long-term folly.

I understand that Crazy 8 is not a traditional publisher, and that gives them the ability to re-think the fixed costs and price accordingly. Setting the price according to the old paradigm is easy, but not necessarily smart. Double the amount going to the author from the traditional print contract, include the portion that goes to the storefront (amazon, B&N, smashwords, etc), add the overhead necessary to have proper copyediting, story editing, art, etc., and set the price accordingly. Like it or not, the market so far has shown that somewhere from 2.99 to 3.99 is a price that’s getting established authors like J.A. Konrath much, much more money than their traditional publishing contracts ever did (read his blog if you doubt – he’s very upfront about the actual dollars earned from both styles of publishing).

The supply / demand curve – at least for popular fiction – isn’t really changed by the availability of digital copies. There was essentially unlimited supply before, as if you want a paperback you can get it from multiple sources, anytime.

To me the whole concept of “I’m not going to pay $5.00 for this book because Diamond wasn’t involved in distributing it” makes little sense. You could begrudge the fact that the author gets a higher proportion of the royalties, but again I’d have to ask why. Do you regularly check the details of an author’s book deal with the publisher before you buy a book?

I’d pay a lot for a digital download of Steve Ditko’s oeuvre, and nothing for an artist I don’t like.

Subtract those costs from the cover price and there’s your digital price.

My vote is $6.99. In return you should get a digital file, not a “cloud” thingie.