I was checking out a book on Amazon.com and, unsurprisingly, got sticker shock. I know, I know… the age of $4.95 popular softbacks has long since passed, but when a popular novel is promoted in a hardcover format at $26… ouch!
But what I saw next surprised me even more.
The DIGITAL (Adobe e-book) version of this book was selling for $19.95. As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, I noticed the following warning:
This title is not compatible with Pocket PCs, PDAs, or other handhelds.
Okay, so let me see if I got this straight. This company is asking me to pay twenty smackeroos for the privilege of squinting to read a non-portable version of a fiction novel?
If this were a reference book of some sort, then I could understand the price.
But charging a customer $20 for bits and bytes that — at least deliverywise — cost practically nothing to provide… am I the only person who finds this to be simply loopy?
What do you think?