UK blogger 'Nik Fletcher' has accused UK publishers of e-book gouging. Or in less hysterical terms, charging too much for e-books. The entertaining blog is entitled, In Which I Make No Apologies for Calling Bullshit on Ridiculous eBook Pricing.

Fletcher says that "since the launch of the e-book reader, the publishing industry has been scrambling to understand the move to digital media" and has adopted an "entirely pigheaded in their approach to online book sales". He uses Jeffrey Archer's Only Time Will Tell as an example of this. The print book is available on Amazon for £5.39, he says, while the Kindle Edition is priced at £9.59. His response: "I had just one question about the eBook price: are you fucking kidding me??"

Except for reasons unclear, and not mentioned in the blog, Fletcher highlights the paperback price, £5.39, even though it is not available as a paperback book until 16th September. A hardback version is available now, and it costs £13.29 (after discount). Meaning that the digital version costs almost 30% less than the physical version, and that is before the 20% VAT levy is taken into account.

Except, of course, it isn't even the publisher which is "gouging" the e-book buyer at all since Pan Macmillan isn't on agency pricing. So the price is being set by Amazon. And presumably even this blogger would allow that the giant internet retailer and world's biggest e-bookseller does know a little bit about the transition to digital.

The facts notwithstanding Fletcher makes two sensible points at the end of the blog. First, he says digital books should be published globally at the same time, and not territorially specific. Such legacy issues won't be unpicked overnight but publishers of English-language titles are already moving in this direction. [Incidentally the US Kindle version of the Archer book is available at a 13% discount to the street price of the hardback version and in this case that is the publisher's responsibility.]

He also writes: "The item you’re selling has to be priced relative to any physical predecessor." He is absolutely right, and this is exactly what has happened in the case of the Archer book. Worryingly though Fletcher could have chosen any number of better examples that would have easily backed up the main thrust of his argument. Current Original Fiction number one Goddess of Vengeance, for example, is selling on Amazon in print for £7.49 (it has an RRP of £14.99), and is available on the Kindle for £9.99. And in this case the publisher, Simon & Schuster, did set the selling price.

This is important. As HarperCollins chief executive Victoria Barnsley notes in her introduction to the Publishers Associations' Yearbook "consumers increasingly expect their digital content to be cheaper", which means publishers may find themselves in the "position of having more readers, more books sold, but not achieving the same returns for [themselves] or their authors".

Only time will tell, of course. Publishers' pricing strategies may be more complex than observers such as Fletcher think, but unless they can back them up with sensible arguments then Barnsley's prediction is likely to prove more or less correct even as bloggers such as Fletcher sharpen their opinions.