RAND Lowers e-Book Prices
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 6/1/2009 2:30:00 PM
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.”
RAND Publications has partnerships with Amazon, Books 24x7, EBL/ebooks.com, ebrary, Ingram Digital/ MyiLibrary, netLibrary and Questia to distribute RAND monographs as e-books. Close to 900 RAND titles are available for Kindle 2, iPhone and iPod Touch. RAND has also recently entered into agreements with Sony to deliver books on the Sony Reader, and with e-book wholesaler Overdrive.
