Sourcebooks Bucks $9.99 E-Book Price Point

The publisher Sourcebooks has postponed the e-book version of “Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse” by Kaleb Nation until spring, citing problems with Amazon.com’s valuing of most digital Kindle titles at $9.99. The hardcover will be released in September.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Sourcebooks CEO Dominique Raccah explained the move: “It doesn’t make sense for a new book to be valued at $9.99 … hardcover books have an audience, and we shouldn’t cannibalize it.”

The company prints about 250 and 300 titles a year, and will publish 75,000 copies of the YA novel. Last week they announced a partnership with the digital publisher Smashwords to publish a number of Sourcebooks romance titles on the site. The digital books will be sold at $6.99, published in nine eBook reading formats.

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