Obligatory ebook Pricing Whine

I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. I have somehow managed to get about 100 or so books on it it the past few weeks. From all my Internet viewing, I know that if there's one thing all ereader owners have to do, it's whine about how expensive ebooks are. I suppose I might as well do that here instead of cluttering some thread somewhere that might otherwise be productively used for actual sensible communication.

Some ebooks are too expensive. Some of the ebooks that are too expensive are ones that I would actually like to own. Lets look at some of the works from my Amazon wishlist for examples:

A Perfect Blood is the next book in Kim Harrison's Hollows series.The ebook is $12.99, which I suppose isn't too bad for a book when the hardcover is selling for $17.81, but I ordered the book club hardcover from BOMC2 for only $9.99.

The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson is in ebooks for $12.99. The paperback is available for $11.73, but that's with Amazon's "let's make the publishers look like greedy bastards for their agency pricing" discount. Even so, this is a 23 year old book. There is no fucking reason for a book originally published in 1979 to be that expensive.

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch is $7.99, which is exactly the same price as the paperback version. At that price, no sane person would bu the ebook. Why pay the exact same price for a license to read a copy of a book on my Kindle as I'd pay to actually own a copy of the book, which I could thereafter sell or loan out as often as I wish?

My opinions are exactly as good as anyone else's on the Internet, which is to say that they aren't worth the paper they're not printed on, but I might just as well go over what I think the ideal price points for me would. be.

$9.99: I can't help but think this would be the best price for ebook editions of recently released hardcovers. This was the price isn't just going to be undercut by Amazon for the paper edition and it isn't too cheap.

$4.99: This one I thinks is slightly more arbitrary to me. I mostly picked it because this is what I paid for the ebook edition of Shades by Brian Keene and Geoff Cooper. I think this is a good price for books like Shades that have only been published in expensive limited edition hardcovers. It would also be a reasonable price for me to pay for newer books available in paperback from major publishers.

$2.99: I think this is a reasonable price for older books, like Guy N. Smith's 1976 Night of The Crabs, which I bought at this price.It's also a good price for the smaller press stuff, self-pubbed authors with actual writing skills,  and novella length works. I see a lot of bizarro novels at this price, and I'll probably get at least some of them.

$0.99: Good price for short stories. Also a good price for the less talented self-pubbed authors, so I can more easily identify and ignore their works.

$0.00: Free is always great for promotion. I've downloaded quite a few freebies.

There you have it. If you agree or disagree with me, please feel free to comment, but please no flaming.