Since Amazon started pushing Kindle hard, we have been on the company’s case for selling e-books for too high of a price. Those $9.99 e-books do save people money, considering that hard-cover books sell for much more than that. At the same time, people can’t lend Amazon e-books, nor can they sell them. When a few publishers announced e-book price hikes, that further aggravated e-book fans. After all, how do publishers expect to charge $14.99 for e-books when they cost much less to publish in comparison to regular books. Could Wired.com be right about consumers overestimating cost savings for e-book publishers?

Publishers do price ebooks a little higher than necessary, because they’re concerned about devaluing people’s perception of books. They’re worried that if they sell the digital editions for too little, they’ll have to lower prices for the paper editions as well, which would undercut their main source of revenue,

Things are very clear when we deal with physical products. Everybody knows that if you go to a store and pick up a book without paying for it, you are committing a crime. Sure. You can always get a free book as a part of promotion. But you get the point. There is no gray area here. Things are less clear when dealing with e-books. If you buy an e-book, you are obviously not entitled to a free physical copy of the same title. But is it OK to download a pirated version of a book that you have already bought in paper format?

The answer is yes and no. Technically, you have already paid for the same content and supported the author in the process. At the same time, you are technically breaking the law. NY Times had a very interesting column on this very topic. The Ethicist concluded that while it’s illegal to download a pirated version of your book, it may not be unethical:

it is not unethical. Author and publisher are entitled to be paid for their work, and by purchasing the hardcover, you did so. Your subsequent downloading is akin to buying a CD, then copying it to your iPod.

Publishers do not appreciate that take. They don’t mind you paying for the same content over and over again. But that seems to be the fundamental issue here. Many of us have come to think of books as physical products. But you are essentially paying for the information. Sure, the design work and all the extras you get with a book cost publishers as well. But there is no reason a person who buys a paper copy of a book should pay the full price of its e-book version as well.

Amazon Kindle has been quite successful in the past few years. It has not only given the e-book industry the boost it needed to move forward and grow, it has provided publishers and independent authors with a platform to share their content with. Kindle Publishing Platform has certainly made it easier for more people to get their books in front of the world. Apple iPad has been received with so much enthusiasm by publishers and authors and certainly has the potential to be a game changer in multiple industries. What the device does not have is a platform for independent authors to bring their works to the iPad. While that could be in the works, independent authors can take advantage of Smashwords’ service to bring their work to iBookstore.

According to an e-mail sent to authors, qualifying Smashwords books will be available on the iPad. Smashwords seems to have a deal in place with Apple to make it possible for independent authors to get their work in front of the iPad community. Here are a few requirements for authors to abide by in order to get their books accepted to iBookstore:

Remember how Amazon Kindle was supposed to give us all a more affordable way to buy and read books? After all, Amazon was supposed to set its own e-book prices so low to make it possible for Kindle owners to save money in the long run. We always knew that large publishers would not give up their profits easily. That’s exactly what has happened with Macmillan. The publisher has reached an agreement with Amazon to set its own e-book prices. It will also keep 70% of its sales for itself.

What does that mean for us consumers? It means e-book prices could be on the rise, essentially making the cost of owning a Kindle much higher than before. Of course, Macmillan is not the only publisher capable of standing up to Amazon. More large publishers will follow suit, and we could technically see higher e-book prices across the board. Authors Guild executive, Paul Aiken, put it best:

Are Amazon or other e-book sellers’ prices too high? That’s the question many experts and e-book fans have been asking in the past few months. When Amazon launched the Kindle product line, it started pushing the fact that “most” e-books were priced at $9.99 as a way to grab more market-share. After all, if you get a bargain price on all your purchases, your device will pay itself off in a short period of time. But is charging $9.99 for e-b00ks what you would call a bargain? Let’s not forget that Amazon does indeed a whole lot more than $9.99 for a decent number of books, so chances are that you don’t really save too much money on your favorite books. But regardless of that fact, paying $9.99 for a book that you can’t sell or transfer to someone else is not getting a bargain.

A recent story on Wall Street Journal mentioned a report by Forrester that confirmed what most of us have doubted for months. Serial readers have a lot of options when it comes to picking up a device to read e-books on. You can always pick up a netbook or a smart-phone to read your books on the go. So if you can find a way to pay less for e-books and read them on those devices, you may end up saving a whole lot of money in the long run. Amazon and other e-book reader makers need to lower e-book prices not just for us consumers but to make e-b00k readers more than they could be in the current situation. Here is what the Forrester analyst had to say about the future of e-book readers:

will never be mass-market devices like MP3 players, but they can exceed current forecasts for adoption.

One could argue that she may be right about the future of this business in the short-term. But at the same time, you should never use the word “never” when dealing with technology. With e-book prices too high and e-book readers using primitive hardware systems, the above statement may in fact be true. But even the most pessimistic experts expect Amazon and its rivals to not only improve their hardware but also lower e-book prices. These are issues that Apple had to deal with in its early days with the iPod. The iPod hardware was not perfect in those days, and the music came with DRM that put a limit on what people could do with their songs. Amazon needs to loosen up its restrictions on e-books, work on a way to get developers involved in improving the Kindle platform, and build better Kindles in the future. It may sound like a challenge, but if e-book readers are to become mainstream, something’s got to change. At the end of the day, it all comes down to innovation (product development and business model).

Your turn: are e-books too expensive currently?