Well, along with the iPad and Kindle for iPad, agency pricing has arrived. After a week of books being unavailable for some Kindle versions, Amazon has updated the pricing for same.
All I can say after reviewing the prices is that if publishers are trying to boost sales and increase market shares, somebody is living in a dream world. As pointed out on a Kindleworld blog post, this new pricing leaves less money to the author and publisher and less money in customer pockets. The only one making more money on this deal is Amazon, who if believed, would rather have done without the pay raise. (Note: Random House is the only ‘Big 6′ publisher staying out of the agency model for now.)
All of this was instigated by Apple’s contract negotiations with the publishers in preparation for the iPad. Perhaps Apple knew that they wouldn’t be selling as many books from their iBookstore so wanted a bigger piece of the pie–who knows. But as pointed out by a savvy blogger, the publishers who signed on forgot that the Kindle encompasses more than a single device. If you have an iPad, you can only read books on that single device–if you own a Kindle, you can read all of your purchased books on your PC, Mac, iPhone, Blackberry and now your iPad. Why publishers would side with Apple on this one baffles me (but see previous post).
Frankly some of the pricing is ridiculous, but Amazon wants to make sure you know where those prices are coming from. In the listing (and in bold when viewing from your Kindle) is the name of the publisher and a notice that “This price was set by the publisher”. The pricing for these books has also been moved out of the Amazon price column and into the New price column.
There is a mix of price points. Some books are higher priced than the paperback–even old ones like some from the Twilight series, while still being less than the hard cover version. Some are reasonably priced, with the Kindle version less than both, and some are too high to be worth mentioning.
I’m waiting to see what the near outcome of this pricing will be. Are publishers going to react to inevitable lower sales numbers of ebooks by lowering pricing? Will they use those numbers to say that ebooks ‘don’t sell’? One thing I will be watching–will the ebook torrent (piracy) levels increases.
For some alternatives to the higher prices, the Kindle Boards forum users (Kindle board is one of the most popular Kindle sites) offer suggestions to lower prices, alternatives to the Big 6 books, links and lists to free and cheap books along with other suggestions. The best suggestion is to contact the publisher via email to let them know what you think. When all is said and done, your mileage may vary depending on which books you are looking for, but you’ll definitely be paying more if you don’t want to wait for prices to come down by using the ‘wait for paperback’ strategy.
