By BOB SNYDER
Remember when ebooks were supposed to be the cheaper, greener alternative to print? “Buy a Kindle,” they said. “Digital is faster, more sustainable, and easy on your wallet.” Back then, a new ebook often meant $2.99 for an indie title, or $9.99 for a bestseller. It felt like a reader’s dream—frictionless access without the hardback price tag.
Well, so much for that dream. I now pay $15-18 for Kindle books. No paper, no ink, no warehouse, no shipping. Just bits and bandwidth. Case in point: The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, currently listed for $17 in Kindle format on Amazon. That’s not a fluke—just one of several overpriced ebooks I’ve bought recently.At first, I assumed this was Amazon squeezing readers. But here’s the twist: it’s mainly the publishers driving the price increases.
The major publishers—the same ones who once touted ebooks as a budget-friendly format—are now the ones setting the high prices, thanks to what’s called the agency model. That means Amazon doesn’t control the retail price of most ebooks from big publishing houses. Publishers do. Amazon just takes its 30% cut.
Why the change? The big publishers argue they need to:
–Protect print sales, which still bring in strong revenue and help justify expensive print runs.
–Preserve the perceived value of books, fearing that readers will grow too accustomed to $2.99 or $4.99 pricing.
–Maintain pricing control, especially after years of fighting Amazon’s deep discounting strategy.
Amazon can still pressure publishers to change prices in specific situations, but basically this is a publisher’s game.
It’s the classic pattern: launch a disruptive new technology with low prices to drive adoption, then reverse course once the customer base is locked in. Reminds me of the early days of ATMs—pitched as a free convenience, until enough of us were hooked. Then came the fees.
Now the same is happening with digital books. We were trained to expect ebooks as a deal. Now we’re being told they’re a premium experience—and priced accordingly.
And what about audiobooks, the poor cousin in this digital triangle? Despite all the buzz about the booming audio market, they often get pushed as membership freebies or sit even higher on the pricing ladder. Everyone’s scrambling for revenue in a world where content is infinite and attention is scarce.
I’ll admit, I still buy hardcovers and paperbacks. I like holding a real book. But with my personal library downsized from 4,000 to 1,000 books (thanks to a wife who doesn’t enjoy dusting shelves), I’ve gone digital for most of my on-the-road reading. That used to mean Kindle. Now it means… hesitation.
Digital was supposed to scale well. No dead trees, no trucks, no returns. Just efficient distribution. Instead, we’re paying nearly the same—or more—than for print. It’s hard to see where the extra cost is going, aside from publisher margins.
I’m not saying publishers shouldn’t make a profit. But it’s fair to ask: are they honoring the original promise of digital publishing—or quietly cashing in on our dependence?
Bob Snyder is a high tech trade editor whose love of reading began with Ace Books’s “flippable” sci-fi paperbacks.” You first read one science fiction novel and then flipped the book over to read another (the “tête-bêche” or “dos-à-dos” format with two books bound back-to-back, inverted).
AI-assisted.
