Students in UK Want eBooks to be Priced Lower

eBooks already enjoy a price advantage over the printed counterparts though that does not seem to be enough for the younger generation in the UK. Or so a study revealed where the 16 to 24 age group expressed their desire for ebooks to be priced even cheaper. The common rationale is that since ebooks cost a fraction of printing a real book, they should also be priced much less than what it is right now.

“Whatever the internal politics and business issues within publishing, young people won’t care: all they want is a price that seems fair—or better than that,” said Luke Mitchell, head of insight at market analysts Voxburner that published the report ‘Buying Digital Content: Research on spending habits, needs and attitudes among UK 16-24s’.

Of the 1,420 respondents who were polled, 17 percent feel ebooks should be priced 75 percent lower than what printed books cost while 28 percent said ebooks should be priced half than their printed counterparts. It is only a minuscule 8 percent that felt ebooks are priced right. Another aspect of the finding that should be of interest to the publishers is that it is only 55 percent that own some sort of an ebook reading device, be it a dedicated ereader or a tablet while the majority 85 percent only own a smartphone device.

“Young people are obsessed with value for money [but] their second obsession is convenience, and this is something also that publishers may be able to work on: how seamless is e-book buying on a young person’s favourite device,” further added Mitchell.

Also, in another interesting revelation, 62 percent of those who took part in the survey said they preferred printed books over ebooks.