Pricing of eBooks
By Jerry D. Simmons | January 5th, 2010 | 3 Comments » (Click to add yours!)

Amazon’s pricing of the Kindle eBook downloads is a good example of how a bookseller is forcing publishers into an uncompromising position. It seems their strategy was to sell reading devices by losing money on each download. When the major publishers decided to sell eBooks to Amazon at the same price and discount as a hardcover, the company took a different approach. The loss per download was nothing more than the cost of doing business, all factored into the price of each Kindle sold.

Where the big publishers made their mistake was allowing Amazon to set the price of the eBook. They never figured the $9.99 price point would stick with consumers. Now the largest publishers may be forced to reset their cost structure to accommodate this price. The problem is that publishers don’t want to share a larger percentage of profits with authors and they use the low Kindle price as a crutch.

Big publishers have created this monster and now they have placed themselves in a position where the world’s largest online bookseller is establishing eBook prices. For those of us trying to gain traction with our own Independent books the relevance is that it gives all of us a clear opportunity. The more we can afford to under price the bigger guys, the better chance we have of selling units and creating an audience. Their dilemma is our opportunity.

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3 Responses to “Pricing of eBooks”

  1. free ebooks download says:
    January 23, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    I’m proud to say that this easily the best article I’ve ready today! :D How can I subscribe?

  2. Tyson F. Gautreaux says:
    January 29, 2010 at 1:12 am

    Great post, thanks. I’ve enjoyed your blog for quite awhile and I should comment more.

  3. Andrea Boccard says:
    October 16, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    Hi, Thanks for sharing this article on ebooks, it was an interesting read. I always like looking up about topics on ebooks! Where can I learn more about this? B

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