E-Book Pricing and My Thoughts There Upon

I've read a lot of posts on ebook pricing, the economics behind it and so forth.

To be honest, I really hate agency pricing. It smacks of price-fixing to me.

I dislike piracy on principle but I also recognize there will always be the little twerp who steals the gum. I'll be doing a post on DRM soon where I will cover my views on that but I tend to agree with Eric Flint in his introduction to Baen's Free Library

3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.

I really like ebooks. I've been reading them since early 2000. I wanted to get a palm pilot when I was in high school specifically because my band director had one and had a copy of a book I couldn't find anywhere on it. To say I was an early adapter is to put it mildly. I saw the potential right away and jumped in with both feet, as far as my income would let me.

Sad to say, I couldn't afford to get an actual ereader until last year. I bought a Kobo and I loved it. I could side load the hundreds of ebooks I'd purchased over the years onto it. However, I couldn't put new books on it. That's irritating and has gotten me slowly moving to the thought that I may have to buy a Kindle. I don't want to buy a Kindle. Yes, I can buy new books but what about all of my old books? From all indications, unless I bought them through Amazon, I can't really load all of my old books onto the Kindle. Am I going to have to carry 2 ereaders with me? That seems a bit, I dunno, excessive.

This all brings me to price.

In order to afford a Kindle, all of the adults in the household are going to have to live on Ramen for a couple of months, and that's if we can swing it with my hubby being out of work. But, hey, I can download new books from Amazon!

If I can afford them.

Like I said, I've read many of the arguments on both sides of the price 'debate' about ebooks. When an ebook a day was a choice between a latte and a new book, well, I learned to make coffee at home and would buy almost 30 books a month. But now, when the choice is between 2 new ebooks (priced at 14.99 each) and diapers? Well, I can't really justify that choice.

I'm finding a lot more books I would like to read at 3.99 and supporting indie authors. I'm also doing my best to make those purchases from the authors themselves, rather than any of the retailers.

I also love the "Humble Indie Bundle" concept of pay what you can/think it's worth.

So, I'm going to offer something similar here.

Hit the tip jar for any amount and I'll send you copies of both ebooks I have, in any format you'd like. If you want it from Amazon, I'll send it to you as a gift.