First, we very much appreciate and value the professional discussion of the posters here. It's also important to point out that we and other eBook retailers offer and will continue to offer hundreds of thousands of titles NOT affected by these 5 REP (Required eBook Price) publishers and agency pricing. More than 75% of our titles will still be available, many discounted and most with Rewards dollars for each purchase.
With specific regard to the agency pricing, we had the choice of surprising our customers with the news after it happened, giving them no advanced notice of availability problems as the 5 publishers changed their systems and sorted out contracts with our wholesalers, plus surprising them (when the books become available again) with increased prices on their typical purchases. Instead, we chose to make our customers aware of all of this as soon as we understood it so that they could research, be prepared and make decisions for themselves. Our customers are savvy readers and savvy shoppers who are often very careful money managers. They communicate with us frequently via social media and our support email.
The publishers action is a response to Amazon's $9.99 pricing. Even though most of these titles lost significant money for eBook retailers, this pricing was adopted by others as a competitive response, including BooksOnBoard on a limited basis. For example, we offered Dan Brown's Lost Symbol at $9.98 at its release and continue to offer titles such as John Grisham's full catalog of recently released eBooks imprints at $9.98. (Dan Brown and John Grisham are Random House authors and will not be affected by the REP pricing issues.) Going forward, the 5 REP publishers will move force their $9.99 titles up to $12.99 or more, adding sales tax and removing other discounts and Rewards or Rebates. This reduces choice for consumers as the ability for any of us to discount is being taken away. And, yes, some of the pricing on high-priced, highly promoted big name releases on our site might drop to $12.99 or maybe $14.99 as dictated by the publishers. These, however, represent less than 1% of our entire catalog of eBooks for sale and less than 3% of all titles sold. On this limited selection, our customers will come out ahead in some cases and in some cases they will not. No matter what, the price will be the same everywhere. Our biggest concern is the REP publishers portion of the other 97% of eBooks sold, where a price increase is almost certain on all titles. This is the heart of where our customers shop.
Most of our customers typically buy eBooks that cost less than $7. Often, these are backlist and series titles, long ago set at paperback prices well below $9.99, and many are new release paperback-equivalent titles priced between $5.99 and $7.99. Adding sales tax to these prices and locking them in at a fixed retail price, which we normally discount, and dis-allowing rewards dollars - a large element of customer savings – will, in fact, add up to much more expensive eBooks for most of our customers for REP titles. Our customers are not the typical Kindle customer with high six figure household incomes, although a small portion do have Kindles, Sony Readers, Cybooks, Astaks, BeBooks, and more. They are people that typically are not making six figures, and cannot normally afford to buy a dedicated eBook reader. Most still do their eBook reading on PCs and laptops. They are typical of most readers who normally waited for the paperback to come out at the bookstore, rather than allow themselves the luxury of paying the hardcover price. A measurable increase in price after locking the new Required Ebook Price (REP), adding sales tax, and eliminating rewards dollars will typically be a significant increase (20% to 35%) in price for these good customers of both BooksOnBoard and the publishers. We are happy to report, nonetheless, that Harlequin, Random House, McGraw Hill, Samhain, and hundreds of our other publishers will NOT be going with the REP model for the foreseeable future.
We will continue to keep our customers informed, even if some interpret it as scare tactics. At the moment, we expect the 5 REP publishers eBooks not to be available after midnight tonight, April 1 We hope to see these eBooks back within a few weeks once the publishers get their infrastructure together. In the meanwhile, our top publishers Random House, Harlequin and Samhain as well as hundreds of others will continue to have hundreds of thousands of titles with Rewards Dollars on our site. Plenty of backlist and plenty of new titles from the publishers whose titles, premised on sales, matter most to our customers.
Please email if we can answer any questions,
support@booksonboard.com
Kurt Johnson
BooksOnBoard