What do Magic, Astrology and eBook prices have in common?
Quite a lot if you ask me. While I have long lamented the woes of eBooks; DRM, pricing, and availability, I feel compelled to revisit the subject.
For all I, a reasonable individual can ascertain, reading the stars and sawing a pretty lady in half as anything I deal with the pricing of eBooks as anything else on this planet.
After reading a Tweet about Seth Godin’s The Dip I decided that knowing when to quit would be a really great skill to have so I set out to look for a copy of this sage advice. With the beautiful screen on my new Motorola Droid providing a great screen for reading and the release of the popular eReader software I set out to procure an eBook of The Dip so I could read it wherever I was.
The first link I found was to Amazon where you can purchase a hardcopy of The Dip for $9.36, but for the want of portability I set out to find a digital copy. What I Found where prices ranging from $10.36 to $12.95 with both the high and low belonging to a Barnes and Noble store.
To this day I cannot understand why I should be charged more for a digital copy of a book; especially if it comes with some form of DRM. While I can’t carry my hardcopy with me all the time, I can share it with anyone I want.
I won’t begrudge an author just rewards for his or her hard work, or even the publisher what they have coming for formatting and publishing a book, but given the fact that they say it costs the same to create an eBook as it does a hardcopy; why the hell do I have to pay a premium for a digital copy?
I welcome your thoughts and explanations.
Josh Smith is a blogger, database manager and adjunct professor of business and technology. 
Digital content has a long way to go….just take a look at the Apple Home Share for Itunes….ummm, you can’t share it with other wireless tools like the iTouch…what the heck??!!! It is a mess, someone needs to get authors, artists, etc in line and show them how much money can be made from the masses if they would come together and get thier act together.