Does anybody know – why do agency prices differ?

As I understand it, the agency scheme sets the lowest price at which an ebook can sold, not the price at which it must be sold. Stores like Amazon, Sony, B&N, and Kobo are very price-sensitive stores and view themselves as the competitive leaders in the ebook market. Stores like Powell’s see their niche as based on customer service and other intangibles. Just as these stores didn’t and often couldn’t compete on pbook pricing, so they are not competing on ebook pricing.

The book in question is $9.99 everywhere that has it listed if you actually go to the individual stores and look at the titles page (some of the stores in the InkMesh results haven’t had the title since Agency pricing started). You can’t trust InkMesh to list the prices correctly for all the stores as they don’t seem to update things from all of them very often.

As to why it costs more than the PB, only Hachette can say. They’re probably the wosrt of the Agency pubs for having ebooks that cost more than their paper counterpart (anywhere from $2 to $5 usually). The $5.60 is a bargain priced paperback which is usually a limited supply item that’s remaindered or discounted some other way from the publisher. It’s probably more fair to compare it to the regularly priced paperback which is $7.99 (which is still $2 less than the ebook).

There is also a possible lag time between the publisher changing the price and the reseller modifying their database.

For example, the publisher decides a formerly $7.99 ebook can now sell for $9.99 because a couple of idiots made a movie version. Ideally, the publisher might set a date for the change, send the price catalog out in advance out as a XML file to resellers, then the resellers load the data into their database. But many things could go wrong. One reseller might get the catalog update done on time, another might be late. I don’t have the details of the Agency agreement about timeliness of catalog updates, but discrepancies and delays are bound to happen now and again. As a database programmer working with vendors, resellers, and product catalog, I know these problems are unavoidable now and again.

While that’s true Greg, Hachette has been doing this (pricing $2-$5 higher than print) for some titles since Agency pricing started so it’s not the case here this title has been $9.99 since April.

Its because publishers are evil, they are just leeches the same way that Labels are for the music business. Only way is to get the Author’s to self publish and cut the publishers out completely. Trouble is that Author’s need the publishers to print the paper backs. Maybe when 90% of the stuff being read is ebooks the Authors can then turn round and show two fingers to the publishers

As to e-books being priced higher than paperbacks: the (Agency model) publishers are not doing cost-based pricing. The publishing industry is suffering from the economic downturn at least as much as everybody else is, and they see e-books as a profit center.

Agency model e-books are being priced at “whatever the market will bear”. If you take a look at Ken Follette’s Fall of Giants, you’ll see that the e-book’s been selling at $19.99 for over two months, and buyers are *still* snapping it up at that price (Sales rank #54 at Amazon, #66 at B&N). Most Big Name new releases are now coming out at $14.99, and staying at that price until they fall out of the Top 50 or so, then repriced to $12.99, where they stay until sales really slack off, then they’re repriced to $9.99.

Huh, this issue seems in direct contract to MacMillan’s explanation of agency pricing way back in March, which I quoted in one of my column pieces:

“John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Press (MP), posted a blog on the MP website on March 2, 2010, stating that they will move from the former “retail model” of selling eBooks to what he terms an “agency model.” Sargent goes on to explain how this benefits the consumer: no longer will eBook retailers be able to buy MP eBooks and then set their own price to re-sell them to consumers. MP will, instead, offer the eBooks at a set price, only allowing the retailer a commission percentage. This, in my opinion, is a smart move as it helps MP eBooks remain competitively priced while also encouraging a wide variety of prices to choose from. Sargent also announced that the “new” model will allow new titles to be released in eBook format “at the first release of the printed book.”

Even more interesting is Sargent’s remarks on which kinds of digital books are preferred by eBook consumers: the new-release titles, including those from the New York Times bestsellers list (priced at $12.99-$14.99 for eBook format) are apparently not the most popular.

“Our e-book sales over the last year clearly indicate that only about a third of our e-book business is in the digital versions of new release hardcovers. Unit sales of older books [priced below $10] far exceed our new release hardcover sales, so the $9.99 and lower prices will continue to represent the largest portion of our business.”

I think Penguin is worse than Hachette is terms of ebook agency pricing. But they all suck.