New deals signed last week between Hachette and Simon & Schuster and their ebook retail partners have driven down prices of ebook best-sellers.
This week, both Hachette and Simon & Schuster inked new retail contracts with Amazon and their other partners, giving up pricing control per a settlement both publishers signed with the Department of Justice over the issue of ebook price-fixing. The retailers have wasted no time discounting some of the publishers’ ebook titles.
Michael Connelly’s The Black Box (Hachette, No. 1 on the best-seller list this week) was $14.99 at Amazon and other retailers and is now priced at $12.74 at Amazon and elsewhere. Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (Simon & Schuster, No. 9 on the best-seller list) was $9.99 and went down to $8.74 last week; the book is currently priced at $7.99.
As a result of those price changes and others, the average price of a book on the Digital Book World Ebook Best-Seller List has dropped to its lowest point since it was launched, $9.06. That’s down from $9.79 last week and the high of $11.79 on Oct. 20.
Partially responsible are several lower-priced titles hitting the list, led by Stop the Wedding, a self-published hit by Stephanie Bond. It rocketed up the list last week to hit No. 6 and is currently sitting at No. 2. A holiday sales push could make it the first self-published title to hit No. 1 on the list — stay tuned!
See the rest of the the best-seller lists for the week ending Dec. 8:
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $10.00 and Above
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $8.00 – $9.99
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $3.00 – $7.99
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $0.00 – $2.99
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