Vook, maker of enhanced eBooks, has released a nifty whitepaper on what it has learned about pricing in the not quite 2 years since it launched. You can download it as a PDF, and it’s well worth your time to read.

It turns out there’s more variables to ebook pricing than you might think. The best selling point for a title is dependent on (among other things) genre, category, ebookstore, and format. Some stores do better at different prices, and there’s really no explanation than it’s a quirk of the store. Some formats or genre also can have an interesting affect on sales.

Vook came up with 10 golden rules to explain some of the things it saw:

  1. Zero variable cost means it’s OK to significantly lower prices to maximize revenue.
  2. Optimal pricing is highly content specific.
  3. Certain pricing thresholds trigger psychological “automatic” purchases.
  4. Categorization has a large role in optimal pricing and discoverability.
  5. Merchandising whole catalogs is more effective than single titles: “A rising tide lifts all boats.”

    6. Read more