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Putting it very simply, the optimal pricing point for an e-book is not going to be the same as that for a print book. Selling only one or the other, or selling one only ancillary to the other, makes pricing very easy. However, the Big 5 are selling both print books and e-books. Why on earth would anyone expect them to price as if they were selling e-books alone. There is no significant price competition at the retail level for print book sales. The Big 5 simply do not compete with each other on price in this market. Nor do they compete with each other on retail prices for e-books. At one stage they were ignoring competition from Indie e-books and setting prices as if there was no such competition. Their current model seems to be to price newly released or re-released e-books at a high price. By doing so they avoid giving print buyers any incentive to switch to e-books, and preserve their traditional pricing methods for print books. At this stage they pick up the available revenue from those prepared to pay top price, whether for a print book or an e-book. Later, just as they have always done with print books, they will progressively pick up available revenue at lower price points. As mentioned in various posts in this thread, we are now seeing some Big 5 backlist e-book titles being sold at prices competitive with the higher end of the Indie market. I'm not sure how prevalent this has become just yet, but it may well be part of the Big 5 experimenting with its pricing and how to compete with Indies. The model seems to make a great deal of sense as it picks up available revenue at the various main price points.
Most Indie authors seem to set a price and leave the book at that price. Some do of course experiment, as they should. But from what I can see most Indie authors do not consistently adopt the practice of charging more for a book when it is first released. Yet there is a market at a higher price, at least for the better known Indie authors. Pre-release Baen does very well selling e-arcs at significantly higher prices to those who simply can't wait. The Big 5 have always been very good at extracting premium prices for their new releases. They seem to be bringing this model to their e-books, only competing with Indies once the premium has been extracted from those prepared to pay it.
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