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Pricing tricks used to herd people into Kindle format?
August 2, 2008 | 9:19 pm
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By David Rothman
Just what book-price tricks might Amazon be pulling off to herd people from regular DRMed Mobipocket into the Kindle-specific Mobi format?
It’s no secret that Amazon is subsidizing those $10 bestsellers for the $360 Kindle. But now MikiS has found the following prices for Walk on the Wild Side (St. Martin’s Paperbacks), which, according to her, is a Mobi-only book.
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 10.81 (list 14.00)
Amazon 6.99 (paper or Kindle)
Ahead are seven other relevant examples from MikiS. I won’t reach any conclusions. But certainly this merits discussion. Are the price gaps the result of subsidies? Or special arrangements between Amazon and publishers? I’d especially love to hear from publishing houses, or Fictionwise, BooksOnBoard and other independents. And if Amazon, whose people regularly read the TeleBlog, wants to speak up, then great! Don’t count on it, though.
Meanwhile, if nothing else, these examples just might help show how DRM can be more of an anti-competition tool than an anti-piracy one. Remember, DRMed Kindle format is just a special variant of DRMed Mobi with slightly different "protection and another file extension.
Shadow Magic by Cheyenne McCray
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 11.20 (list 14.00)
Amazon 6.99 (paper or Kindle)
Night Life by Caitlin Kittredge
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 11.20 (list 14.00)
Amazon 6.99 (paper or Kindle)
Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 10.92 (list 14.00)
Amazon 7.99 (paper or Kindle)
Seize the Night (re-release) by Sherrilyn Kenyon
(which, even more incredibly, had been offered as a freebie as part of the yearofacheron campaign)
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 11.20 (list 14.00)
Amazon 7.99 (paper) or 4.94 (Kindle)
Deep Black: Conspiracy by Stephen Coontz
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 9.95 (list 14.00)
Amazon 7.99 (paper or Kindle)
Gentlemen Behaving Badly by Michelle Marcos
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 10.92 (list 14.00)
Amazon 6.99 (paper or Kindle)
Heartless: The True Story of Neil Entwistle and the Cold-Blooded Murder of his Wife and Child by Michele McPhee
Fictionwise 14.00/11.90 (non-member/member)
Books on Board 10.92 (list 14.00)
Amazon 6.99 (paper or Kindle)
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Comments:
Speaking for BooksForABuck.com, when Amazon discounts our Kindle books, they do so out of their own royalties. BooksForABuck.com receives the full royalty from Amazon for these sales no matter how much Amazon discounts.
In the case of BooksForABuck.com, we’re not talking about Amazon actually taking losses–they’re simply plowing a share of their own cut over to the consumer. I think it’s a good deal for everyone.
In contrast, on Mobipocket, if I want a discount, I have to pay for it. Similarly, when Fictionwise discounts, I get my percentage of their sales price rather than my list price. Bottom line–I’m a huge believer in competition. I want Amazon, Mobipocket, Fictionwise, AllRomanceEBooks and the others to survive and thrive–but I think Amazon’s Kindle store has treated publishers and customers quite fairly (leaving aside the religious hot button of DRM).
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
This brings to mind an article I’d like to see on TeleBlog, and that’s one that discusses e-book distribution channels and their relationships with mainstream publishers.
For example, there’s a current title that my wife is interested in purchasing, but it’s not available from either of the two sites on which she has opened accounts. It is, however, available in e-book form directly from the publisher as well as several other sites that I found via Google.
Am I correct to assume that individual publishers have distribution agreements in place with some sites and not with others? Are there any particular sites that folks would recommend as offering a more complete selection of current titles than other sites? My wife would find an article covering this ground quite edifying.
(BTW, I’m asking on my wife’s behalf because I don’t buy DRMed content myself. I prefer to own my books rather than leasing them.)
I’ve noted the difference in pricing for Kindle editions for a while. Yes, Amazon will sell it to you cheaper — if you have a Kindle. It looks to me like they are trying to use their market position to drive sales in both directions. You buy from Amazon for cheaper prices, and you buy a Kindle to be able to get the cheaper pricing.
The loser in this is Mobipocket, since Amazon uses a different DRM scheme than Mobi, even though the underlying ebook format is the same. Mind you, Amazon *owns* Mobipocket, so they are effectively competing with themselves. The main folks who got pinched are those who already bought secure Mobipocket titles for another platform, then bought a Kindle. Unless they have the needed info and are comfortable hacking to remove DRM, they’ll have to buy another copy to read on the Kindle.
I don’t own a Kindle, don’t *want* one, and don’t buy DRMed titles, so it’s not a big deal here, but I suspect other folks are less sanguine about it.
Looks a lot more like continued price gouging at the “other” sites after a book comes out on paperback (and examples are there at Amazon as well, where the Kindle price is higher than the paperback). I’ve even seen books with multiple Kindle Editions (from two different publishers) at different prices.
Note that if you check enough books, you’ll also find bargains at both of the other sites, where their prices are cheaper than the Amazon Kindle price (even without the annoying “rebates” most use).
The real question here is why do publishers price ebooks above paperback books? I don’t have a problem with the price being equal to the least expensive paper edition, but once the paperback comes out the ebook needs to come down in price. What Amazon is doing is taking less profit (perhaps a loss) to ensure that Kindle ebooks are almost never more expensive than paper books.
I don’t know of even one consumer who thinks that ebooks more expensive than paper is “fair”, most think they should be cheaper. Amazon knows this, and in order to sell lots and lots of Kindles they have to make the ebook prices reasonable.
No surprise. I saw this happening with just about every ebook search I did. Sony is usually $1 higher than amazon’s lowball price.
http://ebooktest.blogspot.com/
I’m not sure if it’s clear, but this isn’t about discounts. These are books being released in print as mass-market paperbacks with typical MMPB prices ($6.99 and $7.99). However, the ebook outlets I checked (not including Amazon’s Kindle offerings) are offering them with LIST prices of $14.00 (and then marking those down however they see fit).
If you’re shopping online and not comparison shopping, it’s easy to assume the books are trade paperback in print, and the price is normal. I only caught it because I had bought one of the books in dead-tree format and so when I saw the $14 ebook price, I knew the publishers were at it again.
This happened a few months ago with Penguin Books, although that “experiment” only last a month or two – and I believe it failed because we brought it to the attention of ebook consumers and they rebelled!
http://www.teleread.com/blog/2007/09/10/dearauthorcom-penguin-ebook-prices-are-outrageous/