Ken Follett Ebook Price Increases by $2, Sales Fall 48%
Ebook prices are still very fluid. There’s no industry standard, or even a consensus, on how much an ebook should cost. Only one thing is for sure, ebook consumers like prices low. Author Ken Follett and his publisher are learning that the hard way. His publisher raised the price of a Follett book from $7.99 to $9.99. The result? Sales of the ebook fell by 48%.
Hopefully this will be a wake-up call to other publishers and authors that higher ebook prices will only hurt sales. This also shows that the agency model, when publishers are allowed to set their own prices, doesn’t work. A recent post on J.A. Konrath’s blog says:
Jason Davis, who runs BookBee, took that as evidence the Agency Model doesn’t work. I happen to agree with him. In fact, I spoke out against the agency model a year ago. Much as publishers thought they’d scored a victory by controlling their own prices, I predicted it was an epic fail.
The post goes on to say that even $7.99 is too high:
Jason’s post also links to another of his posts, where he discusses the optimal price point for ebooks ($2.99-$3.99) based on the research of Dave Slusher, who used something called “math” to analyze prices based on some of my sales.
I’m usually happy to pay $9.99 for an ebook. But if I’m looking at several books I want to read, I will go for the cheaper ebook first. If ebooks were in the $2.99-$3.99 price range, I’d buy a lot more ebooks and be more willing to give new authors a try.
What price are you willing to pay for an ebook (don’t say free, that doesn’t count)?
Related Posts
- Surprise! Guess who benefits most from higher ebook prices?
- How giving ebooks away for free increases print book sales
- Are ebook prices creeping upwards?
- Ebook sales soar while print takes a nose dive
- iPad Sales Soar, But iBook Sales Edged Out By Amazon
Read More: eBooks, The Interwebs
So the optimal price point for an ebook would be $2.99-$3.99. Interesting. I’ll be dropping the prices for my ebooks right away to see what happens.
There is no reason that ebooks should be more than $4-$5 max.especially when you factor in the low cost of publishing an ebook in comparison to a printed copy. Publishing companies are now just middle-men and their days are numbered as writers will just start negotiating with the sellers directly, as Amazon is starting to do. As an early adapter of ebooks, I predicted that this would eventually happen many years ago, so I am not surprised.