How much are you willing to pay for eBooks? (Macmillan wants $15)

Not to mention all the labor for binding and distribution of said books.. that is all included, material costs, labor, etc..

The only e-books I read are Public Domain from either Google Books
or from UPenn's Online Books. I buy physical copies, either new or
used if I need to buy. I like the idea of ebooks, but I don't like the
pricing of either the readers or the digital files (which are really only
rentals). ebooks, IMHO, are best for school students who have to lug
heavy books to and from school. Too often, I see young kids hunched
over, carrying heavy packs that they should not. The big publishers,
for some reason, resist digitizing school texts. However, it makes less
sense if a student still has to fork over $100-$150 for an etext, which
can not be resold. At least, college students can resell most of the
physical texts on Amazon, or eBay, and get something back (unless
the publisher puts out a 'new' edition that is little different than the old,
to thwart students from recycling to get a few bucks back). I'd like
to save some trees, but the publishers have to make some concessions
before I'm interested. Kids in Asia have had all of their texts on
e-readers for several years.

Ditto, me too. Around $5 is a reasonable price for upto 1000 pages of a "virtual" book for me. If I feel it deserves more, I want to be able to Paypal the balance direct to the author.
(This is just my opinion, though, you are free to differ)

I want to be able to get a free eBook version when I buy a physical book costing over a certain price (say, $30?). Such a scheme would REALLY drive adoption of eBooks. Until then, screw the lot. Oh, and they need to be DRM-free, in the ePub format, and have resale ability.

The market will decide the right price over time.

I'm not willing to pay $15 for an eBook. For a paper one, sure, but not for a virtual book. I'm on the Amazon's side, on this matter.

I'd be more inclined to pay more if they let me read the first half for free. There's nothing worse than getting a recommendation from a friend about this awesome new book only to find out 5 chapters in that your friend is a dink and the book is rubbish.

Not too bad when your friend lends you the book, but having to buy it at/near full price. No Thanks.

I agree with some of the people above £1-£5 sounds right to me, but give me plenty of free reading to tempt me in.

I'm pretty sure if they offered this more people would read more and if they are half way through a book and the buy to continue button pops up I think they are far more likely to press BUY than to go off, find a free version and re-find where they left off.

I really don't care if they cost 5, 10 or 15 $
I am a sailor and the availability and the fact that I don't need to bring books, only the Kindle on my travels is far more important than the price if I really want a book.

I can understand $15 for an ebook released on the same date as the hardback, but I would be more inclined to buy more at $10. With the $15 dollar price point, I'd wait for the price of most books to go down. But, I'm afraid that publishers will try to push to keep ebook prices higher than print copies. No one wins really wins if they do that.

I don't think it will be the price that will kill ebooks though. The DRM and user agreements on the other hand... I shouldn't be forced to buy books from any one store because of the device I have, and I shouldn't be out of luck if I have to change devices. I also shouldn't be forced to use anybodies device depending on where I shop. Also, the idea that a company can get on my device and remove items that I've paid for with no notice is super worrying to me.

It's really awful that they wait half a year to release paperbacks in the first place.

E-Books should be the cheapest form of a book, so $5 is good for me as well.

The bang you hear is McMillan shooting itself in the foot. $9.95 is fair and reasonable. There is little motivation to pirate. There are few pirated ebook titles. $15 reeks of greed and opportunism. The jolly roger just went up the flagpole.

Couple things that stand out to me on this:

1) Aren't new release hardbacks going for significantly more than 14.99? I'm not saying I wouldn't rather pay 9.99 of course but the article above makes it sound like the 14.99 price is the hardcover price?

2) NyaR's comment brings up something the author of this article didn't, and that is the increased level of piracy of a digital version. In business terms piracy is essentially a cost, much like shoplifting for retail chains. So it is factored in to the cost analysis for the product, in addition to the items that the author did list.

Again, 9.99 obviously is better a better short term deal for consumers than 12.99-14.99, but it may not be as cut and dried as it sounds at first glance.

I really hate how these companies that only publish are so greedy!!! You know how much more the actual author will get with price increases like this? Make a guess.
If they are going to sell it at the same price (or almost the same) as a regular book, I don't see the point in getting the digital version, you have to invest in the reader (which is not cheap by the way) and I hear regular books have better battery life too!

I'd be willing to pay $5-10 for a digital book, esp since a majority of publishing costs (paper, printing, binding, shipping) are reduced (re: non-existant) with ebooks. I would however also like to see a model where an e-book would come with the physical copy of the book I purchased at full price. Sometimes I don't have my newly purchased book with me but I do have a mobile device.

I think this is ridiculous. When I pay $15 or $20 for a physical book, I'm not just paying for the writing and the ideas in it--I'm also paying for something I can highlight and fold pages in, lend to friends, decorate my bookshelf with, take anywhere I want, not worry about theft, and keep forever. I'm also paying for something with unlimited battery life.

An ebook, on the other hand, is something I'd buy for no reason other than that I can't get ahold of the physical book, or I want it right now. $15 is too much to pay for convenience. I'd pay $5.

The problem is that it costs them nothing to NOT sell the e-book. They haven't spent anything printing it, they don't have to store it, and people will buy the physical copy instead. Why wouldn't they make as much money as possible from it?

Really, one should buy the rights to one copy- in the same way as when you buy music, you have the right to make copies in other formats for your own use. I might buy a hardback because I like books, but want to read it on my phone- why should I have to buy it twice?

These are the same asshats who think having a text-to-speech reader "read" your book is the same thing as stealing an audio book, aren't they? Yeah, that explains a lot.