Content Prices outside the US.

[malliemcg]

Greetings,

I'm currently trying to understand the cost differences between the US Store and in my case the Australian store. I've looked at some books and see the following situation:

Free (public domain books) - $0.00 to $2.00 varies, six months ago most of the public domain books were all $2, now most are literally free.

Cheaper (Jan Strnad's Risen) US 3.89, AU 5.89 (+$2 difference)

"Popular" random price difference
US 9.99 AU 10.12 Dan Brown - Lost Symbol (+13cents)
US 9.99 AU 10.46 Stieg Larsson - The Girl who kicked the hornets nest (+47cents)
US 7.99 AU 10.46 Stieg Larsson - The girl who played with fire (+$2.47)
US 7.14 AU 9.15 Stieg Larsson - The girl with the dragon tattoo (+$2.01)
US 9.99 AU 9.88 Wilbur Smith - Assegai (-11cents)

Now all these prices are in USD (as the Australian kindle store still charges and displays as USD, so it's not an exchange rate thing), colour me confused I was under the impression prior to the announcement of the K3-WiFi there was an extra $2 added to the price of all kindle books in the Australian store to cover whispernet delivery over 3G.

However I now have absolutely no idea what's going on with the prices as they seem random, and in some cases price gouge like and even one book for cheaper?!.

[ATDrake]

Could it be that the rights to those particular titles are handled by different publishers in your region, and they're setting individual prices not linked to those in the US store?

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Could it be that the rights to those particular titles are handled by different publishers in your region, and they're setting individual prices not linked to those in the US store?

In some cases, but if you look at the ebook The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner : An Eclipse Novella (don't laugh it was the first one I could remember) is published by the one publisher for both US and Aus, yet the price is 9.99US for the US and 11.99US for Australia. So not in all cases is it to do with publishers (unless a publisher wishes to charge more in one geographic area than another).

[ATDrake]

Well, the difference in the Bree Tanner novella is covered by the $2 Whispernet surcharge.

But with the uneven prices of the Larsson and other books that can't be explained by the surcharge alone, I thought perhaps there might be different rights-holders involved.

[NightGeometry]

Could it be that they are not covered by the agency non-sense in Aus, and thus cheaper, but then there is a $2 extra on top? That is a bit convoluted but it seems to make sense (to me at least).

[Chris Crouch]

Originally Posted by malliemcg

"Popular" random price difference
US 9.99 AU 10.12 Dan Brown - Lost Symbol (+13cents)
US 9.99 AU 10.46 Stieg Larsson - The Girl who kicked the hornets nest (+47cents)
US 7.99 AU 10.46 Stieg Larsson - The girl who played with fire (+$2.47)
US 7.14 AU 9.15 Stieg Larsson - The girl with the dragon tattoo (+$2.01)
US 9.99 AU 9.88 Wilbur Smith - Assegai (-11cents)

As others have mentioned, it's to do with different rights-holders charging different amounts in different parts of the world.

For example, Lost Symbol is published by Doubleday in the US and by Transworld Digital in Australia.

I'm guessing if you do the legwork you'll find the same thing in every case where the difference isn't exactly $2.

One extreme example I came across recently was when I was looking at the latest Janet Evanovich novel for my wife. It was $13 for the US & $23 for Australia. It's since come down to $16 for Australia, but we're going to wait a little longer I think :-)