You no longer have to haul around your ipod touch and a kindle to buy kindle books. There's a kindle application for the ipod touch (and it's free). It doesn't have a dictionary, or capability to email your books to your "kindle", or even transfer between the computer and the kindle (unless you have your ipod jailbroken and ssh into it like I do). But you can get the ebooks for cheaper prices if you're not bothered by reading only on the small screen OR being techy and illegally stripping the DRM.

Mmmm... so just because it's an eBook, the publisher and the author shouldn't make any money off it, because they "only" make money on the printed books? (which are more like $27.99 these days, which makes $12.99 seem a bargain!) There's still production costs to be covered in the back-end accounting for ebook sales (their sales might keep the paper version from costing $42.99!) It's not a "no cost" operation that magically appears on the editor's desk in the morning, edited and composed by the eBook fairles. :)

Also keep in mind for every used book that gets re-sold and passed around (regardless of how "green" that is for saving trees,) the author doesn't get any royalties.

Even Adam West gets a nickel every time they re-run Batman ;)

Also - if you follow the Fictionwise marketing program over time, there are plenty of opportunities for getting reduced rate and even free books, through their rebate system (which works as a "house credit" you can use like cash on future purchases.) So the price you see might not be the "real" price you pay, depending on the promo, and how much credit you've built up over time in your Fictionwise account.)

It's not really Fictionwise's fault, either. Unfortunately, the cost of a book is determined primarily by the publisher, and most publishers are not currently making a distinction between prices for electronic books and prices for paper books.

We expect that publishers will eventually adapt their business models to the new distribution mechanism of electronic books. Until then, I'll be reminding myself how nice it is not to haul around lots of heavy books on my next vacation and how much money I saved downloading all those free books. :-)

We're glad you're enjoying Stanza. Thanks for your support!

I don't really think this is a fair way to compare the price of the books. Sure some people may like to have a hard/soft back copy of a book. The prices on Amazon are not something I even consider because I buy eBooks for a specific reason.. I carry them with me on my device where ever I go and I'm just not going to do that with a regular book. This is driven based on my reading style.. I often only get 5 minutes here.. 5 minutes there so I pop out my phone or iTouch and read.

I am relatively new to this whole e-book thing. I have been keen on it but waiting until I had a device suitable for reading. Now I have the iPhone and it looks great.

But this price thing is astonishing and outrageous and to be completely honest STUPID. It reminds me so much of the music copying fiasco and mark my words the same thing will happen with ebooks as happened with music.

What on earth are these publishers thinking ? Do they really think intelligent people will pay the same price for an ebook as for a paper book on the hight street ? a paper book they can share with their friends and then sell or trade in ? Clearly what they are trying to do is make short term 'super profits' and to hell with down the line. This kind of greed will come back and smack them in the near future when people start to turn on to the ebook format and the hackers turn their eye to copying and unlocking books and then we will all simply download and share them - and the reason is the greed and short sightedness of the publishers.

I am a capitalist. I believe in profit and in business. But screwing the customer and gauging the customer in a market that is new and capable of astronomic future growth is plain stupid and dumb.

I saw a new fiction book on one of the ebook sites last night that I visited through Stanza, I think, and it was priced at about $25 !!!! how insane is that ??

I see a future fast approaching, if it is not already here (after a short session of google searching on torrent sites), when readers will simply bypass the publishers and go straight to 'illegal' sharing sites - and I won't have a jot of sympathy for them or the writers who allow them to charge these insane prices.

Saoir