[MacEachaidh]

Hi Brodie,
Thanks for your reply. I really appreciate your interest!

I second the positive comments about the website. The search seems to have improved significantly, and it's great that each listing now explicitly states the format.

Some observations:
1) It would be helpful for the ebook's format to show in the list of returns from the search, rather than having to click through on each title to know if it's epub or PDF.
2) The flagging on the database isn't bullet-proof. I found quite a few examples where the returns of a search on an author didn't include a specific title, but a subsequent search on that title did return a listing, in each case with the same author spelling I had just searched on.

Here are some quick examples of the kind of discrepancy I was referring to. The first price is from Amazon AU and the second from Angus & Robertson, the Australian affiliate of Kobo (with prices matched to kobobooks.com). Both prices are in Australian dollars.

Eric Maisel, Coaching the Artist Within - $11.74 / $22.95
Eric Maisel, A Writer's San Francisco - $10.32 / $23.19
Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life - $12.00 / $18.59
Robert Moss, Active Dreaming - $11.42 / $22.95
Robert Moss, Dreamgates - $11.53 / $20.79
Michèle Burdet, Stumbling Down the Shamanic Path - $4.16 / $12.79
Steven Farmer, Ancestral Karma - $11.74 / $18.79
Jill Dearman, Bang the Keys - $11.53 / $17.90
Jessica Morrell, The Writer's I Ching - $10.55 / $20.79
Linda Seger, The Art of Adaptation - $11.42 / $18.89
Hazel Smith, The Writing Experiment - $19.97 / $36.31
Stan Gooch, Dream Culture of the Neanderthals - $11.53 / $16.79

These aren't just picked cherries. Though many of the prices are closer to equivalent, and in some cases Kobo was actually cheaper, there are still lots more examples like this, even just in my areas of interest. Now, I'm aware that when the Amazon prices are sub-$20, it only takes a fairly small increase in the Kobo price to make the percentage difference seem huge, but differences like these certainly add up. I've also read a lot of reports by author groups and publishers about how, ahem, Another Vendor uses market share to strong-arm them into unfavourable pricing deals, so it just may not be possible for Kobo to compete dollar for dollar. I'm not buying into that particular barney, but I'd like to think that higher prices mean more equitable payment for the writers (though the cynic in me suspects it goes no further than the publishers). But self-interest has to play some part, and it's difficult to remain altruistic when the costs mount.

None of these books is fiction. I haven't got onto that part of my spreadsheet yet, but I'm expecting that that is where Kobo's pricing efforts are focused. (It's certainly where Kobo's promo deals are!) I'm not your average reader who buys whatever popular novel is trending on Twitter, so I realise the specials will probably pass me by, but I'd like to pay less of a premium for it.


Edited to add:
Brodie, as I mentioned in my OP, I found quite a few instances where titles that I had previously noticed prices for have now disappeared from the Kobo catalogue, most of them from both kobobooks.com and angusrobertson.com.au. Does this mean the end of a resale contract for certain titles, or is Kobo winnowing the titles it carries? I hope Kobo continues to be more than basically an outlet for paperback fiction.