Pricing

The Justice Department may sue Apple, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Pearson, Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins Publishers, claiming collusion in eBook pricing.

Reuters has more: “The suit brought on behalf of e-book customers, alleges Apple and the publishers colluded to shift e-book pricing from a wholesale method, where retailers pay for the product and charge what they like, to agency pricing, where publishers would tell retailers what they can charge. The class action lawsuit, filed by law firm Hagens, Berman, Sobol, Shapiro, LLP, accuses Apple of being a ‘hub’ for collusion.”

Last August, consumer rights firm Hagens Berman filed a class action suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple and five of the “big six” publishers with a similar claim. The European Union Commission has also been investigating publishers for eBook price collusion.

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eBook pricing ebbs and flows like the tide and we hear a lot of different pricing ideas from the publishers, authors and readers that we speak to. Some people think that $.99 is the right price to get a reader to try an unknown author and others think that such a low price point makes the book seem unworthy of a reader’s attention. The big publishers succumbed to Amazon’s $9.99 price point, but then adopted the agency model and set their own prices.

So what do prices look like today? According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, eBook prices are up. The WSJ reports: “The price gap between the print and e-versions of some top sellers has now narrowed to within a few dollars—and in some cases, e-books are more expensive than their printed equivalents.” Still as the article goes on to report, the overall price of eBooks has dropped by 11% since 2009. Read more

Want to get the best price on digital books? Inkmesh.com can help. The site aggregates the eBooks by store, price, format and device.

For example, if you search for Stieg Larsson‘s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, you can see that the eBook is available  tells you how much it costs $5.00 from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony. It’s $6.99 from BooksOnBoard, $7.99 from the iBookstore and $9.99 from the Diesel eBookstore, eBooks.com and Kobo.

BooksOnBoard has the most different formats. The retailer has the eBooks in the following formats: Adobe Digital Editions PDF, Adobe Digital Editions ePub, eReader, Microsoft Reader and MobiPocket.

UPDATE: It turns out that this price engine is not so effective. If you click through on almost every single one of these, you will find the eBook price is currently $9.99 across retailers (The price only various from UK retailers). Oddly these aren’t even the prices for the print titles at these stores.

Today consumer rights firm Hagens Berman filed a class action suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple and five of the “big six” publishers.

The suit alleges that Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster “colluded to increase prices for popular e-book titles to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing.” The named plaintiffs are Oakland, California resident Anthony Petru and Natchez, Mississippi resident Marcus Mathis.  Follow this link to read more about the suit.

Here’s more about the suit, from the release: “The lawsuit seeks damages for the purchase of e-books, an injunction against pricing e-books with the agency model and forfeiture of the illegal profits received by the defendants as a result of their anticompetitive conduct, which could total tens of millions of dollars.”

Read more

In what he admits is an unscientific poll, author Nathan Bransford did a survey about what readers expect to pay for eBooks and the results found that the majority of readers expect to pay less this year than they expected to pay last year.

In February of 2010, Bransford ran a poll on his website asking, “What should an e-book cost when the hardcover is $25.00?” The results were as follows: 5% of respondents thought it should be $.99-4.99; 29% thought it should be $5.00-9.99; 45% thought it should be $10.00-14.99; 15% thought it should be $15.00-19.99; and 3% thought $20-25.00.

This time around readers attitudes shifted towards the lower price points. A whopping 21% thought that the eBook should be $.99-4.99; 51% said $5.00-9.99; 2% thought it should be $15.00-19.99; and no one thought it should be $20-25.00.

What price do you think it should be?

Pricing an eBook is a troubling question. Price it too much and no one will buy it and price it too low and people think it isn’t worth much. We decided to help publishers by looking at the Top 100 paid books in the Kindle store at 1pm ET today (the store updates its metrics hourly), to see how the top ten selling books are priced. It was no surprise to see that the top selling eBook (A Little Death in Dixie) is $.99.

The next few titles are $5 and under. The No. 2 title, The Hunger Games, is $5.00. The No. 3 title Summer Secrets is $4.99. The No. 4 title My Horizontal Life is $1.99. It’s not until position No. 5 that we see a $9.99 eBook The Help, which is a very common price point in the Kindle store. However, once we get to position No. 6- No. 9, we see higher pricing compared to the top four sellers. Catching Fire at No. 6 is $7.70, Mockingjay at No.7 is $7.14, Buried Prey at No. 8 is $12.99, and Something Borrowed at No. 9 is $9.99. The Top 10 is rounded out by Winter Sea, which is priced at $2.99.

By these numbers, it seems that the $.99 price point, the $9.99 price point and something around $5 or $7 are sweet spots, depending on the title. And a $12.99 eBook, still has the potential to make the Top 10 list.

What do you think is the right price for an eBook?

France has legislation in the works that would put price controls on eBooks, similar to the controls already in effect in the country for print books.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more: “Yesterday a French parliamentary committee voted unanimously (!) to impose a unique price on eBooks sold in France, even if they’re sold from outside France. This is consistent with earlier regulation, which mandates a single price for dead tree books.”

eBook penetration in France is growing, according to a study that came out earlier this week. The GfK Group polled a thousand French internet users about how they read content, and found that 14% read eBooks. Unfortunately piracy is big in France. According to the study, 39% of those surveyed use online eBookstores, 34% use apps and  29% admitted to being a pirate. Rigid eBook pricing might not help.

In light the earthquakes in Japan today, I wanted to read up on the 1994 Northridge Earthquake — a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Los Angeles that I experienced and remember being particularly intense.

Googling around, I found a book called The Northridge Earthquake by Robert Bolin from Powell’s Books. The book’s description sounded good: “This book concentrates on the social aspects of disasters, focusing on the most expensive disaster to date in US history, the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Surveying historical and contemporary facets of life in Southern California, Robert Bolin explains how vulnerability to disaster has been shaped by more than a century of immigration, urbanization, environmental transformations, and economic development.” But when I looked at the price, my jaw dropped. $238 for an eBook?!

I thought that maybe there would be an old print version available instead, but no, even the used print version on Amazon is $104.53. I understand that out-of-print books often have high prices because they are unavailable, but I have never seen this for a book that has an eBook version. Also, it is interesting to note that there are various different prices depending on the eBook format that you want. The Microsoft Reader version is only $125.12 and the Adobe Digital Editions is $229.07.

Where do these crazy prices come from?

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has a new memoir coming out on Penguin’s Sentinel HC imprint, and the eBook will likely cost you more than the hardcover.

The book centers on Rumsfeld’s career from his first political job on Capitol Hill during the Eisenhower administration through his work at the Pentagon under George W. Bush. His motto: “If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.”

Amazon and Barnes & Noble both have the books available for preorder in advance of the February 8th release of the book. The hardcover is on sale from the $36 list price for $19.72 at Barnes & Noble and $19.92 at Amazon. Both the Kindle store and the Nook store are preselling the title for $19.99.

Is this too much for an eBook?

The Office of Fair Trading in the UK is investigating eBook pricing and the relationships between publishers and retailers after getting complaints.

The Independent has more: “The regulator did not name any of the parties affected by the inquiry, but is investigating whether any of the industry deals were anti-competitive and could affect trade in the UK. The investigation will be led by Andrew Groves, deputy director of the OFT. The issue focuses on publishers’ ability to set e-book prices using the ‘agency’ pricing model, which has been held responsible for stifling competition.”

When Amazon first launched its Kindle store in the UK in August, the retailer did not allow an agency model. But in September some publishers began moving to an agency model, which Amazon openly critiqued in a letter to consumers posted on its site.