Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
The one thing that hasn't really been factually demonstrated is whether once you go past the heavily discounted bestsellers, which were few in number, did agency pricing really change the pricing dynamic? I know that anecdotally there has been a claim that pricing went up and that people can point to a few books where that was true, but I'm asking about pricing over the line of books.
I don't buy the "bestsellers" that were the subject of Amazon's $9.99 pricing scheme, and of the books that I do buy, my experience has been that some were up a little in price and others were down a little in price but that on average there was really no change. I wonder what the true pricing facts are.
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I don't recall seeing any actual broad numbers on the subject, it would be interesting. All I can go off of is my own book buying.
I can say that I mainly buy books once they're mass market priced which now means $6.99-$9.99 and before Agency pricing the list price on those books was about the same $6.99-$9.99, but they were always discounted (usually 15-35%) so that their street price was often a bit less than the pbook. So for me there was definately an increase in book prices.
On the other hand for the small number of "hardcover priced' ebooks I buy that weren't $9.99 bestsellers the $12.99-$14.99 pricing now employed has been about the same, sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less.
Where I've seen the biggest problem, for me, is with 'trade paperback' priced books. Those used to always be discounted into the $8.99-$9.99 range and while some are still $9.99, I've run into quite a few at $10.99-$12.99 and with those books we don't ususally see a price drop after a year or two (like we do with hardcovers) as they often don't see a mass market paper release. Unfortunately trade releases are on the increase.