Quick pricing analysis of Kindle Store Book Bestsellers shows some encouraging signs -
In the Top 25 Kindle Books:
- Number of Free Books: 6, including #s 1, 3, 4, 10, 12, 19.
- Number of Books below $9.99: 5, including #s 2, 8, 13, 15, 18.
- Number of books at $9.99: 12, including #s 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25.
- Number of books over $9.99: 2, including #s 15, 18.
Its encouraging to see lots of books at or below $9.99. Also, there are enough free books to supplement your purchases. Its telling that just 2 books priced over $9.99 are in the top 25.
Looking at the top 100 Kindle Book bestsellers:
- Number of Free Books: 27 (6 public domain).
- Number of Books below $9.99: 29.
- Number of books at $9.99: 38.
- Number of books over $9.99: 6.
Wow – so only 6 books breaking the $9.99 barrier are in the top 100. Its also interesting to see how popular free books are, and that very few of them are public domain.
This admittedly small sample size analysis seems to hint -
- Pricing a book higher than $9.99 is suicide.
- Pricing a book less than $9.99 can help sales (two of the twilight series are priced around $5.59 and are both in the top 25).
- Free works as a strategy to get mindshare.
- The demand for free current books is, not suprisingly, much higher than free public domain books.
Finally, the 6 authors with books priced higher than $9.99 are – Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Laurell K. Hamilton, Eric Braverman, Jeff Hertzberg, and Matthew B. Crawford. Unfortunate that they are missing out on sales and potential readers because of their (or their publishers) pricing strategy.
Update: As far as Kindle Blog bestsellers, 10 of the top 25, and 37 of the top 100 are $1.99 blogs (#1 is the free amazon daily blog, and rest are $0.99 subscriptions).
Filed under: content, kindle Tagged: | $9.99 kindle, kindle book prices
of course this is the case… and of course it wont matter a whit, because those publishers/authors are either too stubborn or too stupid to stop pricing the books so high.
my vote is for stupid.
the end result will be the publishers finding themselves broke and out in the cold along with the RIAA, MPAA, television networks, and all the other dinosaur companies who couldnt update their business models to take advantage of new market realities. meanwhile the companies that “get it” will get rich… (then become the dinosaurs and ultimately collapse themselves, but thats another story)
The reason that so many free or cheap books are in the top 100 is that they are free or cheap. I have recently been shocked to discover that virtually all the new releases are well over $9.99, even up to $19. So the trend to higher prices is growing. Moreover, my completely unscientific survey indicates that they are not dropping to $9.99 as they did before. So I am a very unhappy kindle camper.
actually compared to a month ago, the number of bestsellers above $9.99 has reduced dramatically. There used to be 4 or so just in the top 25.
free +/- cheap = good marketing strategy.
$9.99 = ideal price point.
what is working is the greater than $9.99 boycott. personally there are a few books that I’ve held off on and the only book over $9.99 bought was one i needed for work.
also, don’t buy the books above $9.99 – that’s the best way to ensure prices drop.