Reader prices cut, ebook prices creep up
Posted on 26. Jun, 2010 by JD in Devices, News, iPad, kindle, nook
Anyone noticed eReader prices coming down as book prices go the other way?
After the big news last week of the new cheaper Nook offerings and tit-for-tat K-K-Kindle kut, consumers must have been rubbing their hands together and enjoying some welcome price competition.
It was all forced by a big new player in the market – iPad, you may have heard of it – at a higher price but offering many more features.
And don’t think that this reader price war is over. I have a funny feeling that sellers of even the low-end readers will have to adjust their prices very soon, in a kind of trickle down effect. IPad makes Kindle 2 look overpriced – price drop – cheaper Kindle 2 makes Kobo reader??? or Bookeen Cybook??? or BeBook look overpriced – price drop. Watch this space.
Isn’t it great when the expansion of a range of consumer products forces a price shakeout. More readers, different features, different price points. Market price adjustment. That’s the free market and it’s called competition.
Too bad it’s not happening with the ebooks that the readers display.
The agency model of ebook pricing has seen the price of ebooks flatten at best and, according to me and others, creep up. There are certainly far fewer price variations in ebooks than there were a couple of months ago.
We have an ideal tool to show you this – www.EbookAnt.com – it’s an ebook comparison search engine and our sister site. We’re almost at 600,000 titles, so it’s a fair sample of the paid ebook market.
Do a search on a popular mass-market book, I tried “Breaking Dawn” by Stephenie Meyer, and you’ll find two things. The first is that all the prices are the same.
Yep, four major stores with the title are selling it at $US10.99. different formats, different stores, same price. Hmmm.
How's that for price comparison?
The second thing you may notice is that that price point is a little higher than it was a couple of months ago.
Booksellers will argue that better profits for them will mean a stronger industry, but pissing consumers off seems a strange tactic.
And we’ve seen evidence time and again that lowering prices to increase sales volume increase profits.
So are we having fun yet, paying more for our books again?
Australians will know the feeling of apparent price collusion at the petrol (gas) pump. It’s very hard to prove and therefore hard to stamp out, but all the petrol prices of the major chains fluctuate weekly here – in unison.
In case you didn’t know, consumers hate this, and feel like they’re being ripped off.
Retailing karma always seems to come back to bite vendors who engage in greedy price gouging. Eh, BP?