I talked some time ago about the price of ebooks. In fact, I talk a lot about the price of ebooks.
Yes, you can download free ebooks from a variety of places (see my links on the right for an ever-expanding list of freebook sources), but the majority of these are either technical works, ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes, or out of copyright classics. So, what if you want to read some good, contemporary fiction? Say, something of the bestsellers lists?
How about James Patterson’s “Run For Your Life”? Currently 4th onNeilson’s UK top 50. I like James Patterson, and have read a number of his Alex Cross novels. So I fire up my Kindle (if I had one), and go to the Amazon Kindle store, and find the ebook there at the princely sum of … $12.69. That’s £7.90 in British Pounds Sterling. The paperback version - remember, printed in black ink on dead trees, collated, bound, nice cover, put into boxes, and transported around the country - is $10.19. It’s cheaper than the ebook! Even the audio book is only $13.59, and they’ve had to pay an actor to sit there for hours reading the thing. data from here
So, how many people have downloaded this book to their Kindles? Amazon are tight-lipped about actual quantities of sales, but we can look at the Best Sellers in the Kindle Store. 9 of the top 10 ebooks selling on Amazon’s Kindle Store are priced at: $0.00. Free. No money. The 10th is unavailable, so we don’t know. Interestingly, the first non-free ebook on the Kindle bestsellers list is a James Patterson book - “I, Alex Cross”, priced at $9.99.
So, what does this tell you about the “Acceptable Price” that Kindle owners are prepared to pay?
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