New trends in ebook pricing (from Paid Content)

[taming]

http://paidcontent.org/2013/05/30/fr...ebook-pricing/

Some interesting (to me) quotes from the article:

The downward trend is driven largely by self-published authors, Tamblyn said, stressing that the global prices of traditionally published ebooks have remained roughly stable, with prices varying by about $0.50. Following big publishers’ settlements with the Department of Justice in the ebook pricing case, the prices of their ebooks have settled as well — “slightly north of pre-agency” prices, Tamblyn said. “Almost all the change that we see in overall global price point today is coming from self-publishing…

So how do average ebook prices compare globally? “The U.S. is neither the most nor the least price-competitive market in which we operate,” Tamblyn said. “There are very different prices that customers are used to paying and willing to pay on a market by market basis.” The average selling price of a Kobo ebook in the U.S. is about $7.20; in Canada, it’s $8.12. In the U.K. — “for our money, the most ferociously competitive price market in the English language” — the average selling price of a Kobo ebook is $5.76.

In July 2012, Sony began running a promotion in its U.K. store where it sold ebooks for just 20 pence (USD $0.30). (The promotion ended in March.) Many other retailers, including Kindle U.K., matched those prices; Kobo didn’t. “We actually saw no change in our market share as those promotions were running,” Tamblyn said. “Mostly, retailers sold 20-pence books to their own customers and didn’t generally take anyone else’s customers. They essentially did a massive margin write-down to themselves…it was an interesting lesson in the relative stability of customer bases, and customers’ loyalty to a particular platform once they’ve joined it.”

[treadlightly]

I imported my 200+ book Goodreads to-read list into my luzme.com Watch List and have been seeing ebook prices go up and down by $0.12-$1.00. There haven't been too many major markdowns, except when an ebook transitions from "hardcover" price to "paperback" price. I was hoping for more competition in the post-agency pricing era.