Rand Corporation has lowered
the price of its ebooks to $9.95.
With the price of e-books still a hot topic, the nonprofit research organization RAND Corp. has changed the retail price on all of its e-books to $9.95 each. The director of publications and creative services, Jane Ryan, said RAND's production, distribution and freight costs are lower for e-books, and "we want to pass these savings on to the public. Given the timeliness of our research, we want to make our work quickly available on multiple platforms, including smart phones." RAND had previously based its e-book pricing on the retail price of print editions.
Marketing director John Warren said, "The economics of e-book distribution are different than print, where the cost of printing, distribution and returns factor into the price paid by consumers. Color charts and a greater number of pages, for example, drive up the cost of print-on-demand, but are not a factor in electronic books."
Ebook prices are a consideration for consumers, but the bigger consideration is the price of the ebook readers. When the price of the readers comes under $100, that's when sales will really start to take off.
