Fun coincidence here. My Kindle friend Richard A. visited earlier this week to lend me his Kindle DX so I could check out the features of the new version 2.5 Kindle software upgrade on the DX hardware, and in the course of talking about everything under the sun we were talking for a moment about something that we both enjoy, which is quality audiobooks. Rick strongly recommended that I give a listen to Barbara Rosenblat's readings of some of Elizabeth Peters' series of Amelia Peabody novels, which he said, perhaps not in so many words, are the very apotheosis of excellence in the spoken word.
And I will.
But meanwhile, so soon after our conversation, I couldn't help but notice that there are two Elizabeth Peters ebooks from that self-same Amelia Peabody series racing up the Kindle Store sales ranking ladder today after being priced at $1.99 each, apparently not by Amazon but by imprints of their agency model publisher, Hachette. No idea how long these prices will last, but given that they have been priced at $1.99 in both the Kindle and iBooks stores, one must assume that the pricing is no accident. Here they are:
So, if you don't have these books on your Kindle yet, and you've ever wanted to give Elizabeth Peters a read, now's the time. And while I am sure that the Kindle text-to-speech (TTS) feature is no match for Barbara Rosenblat, let me hasten to note that both books are TTS-enabled on the Kindle!
One more reason why you might want to try these at $1.99, if you are an advocate of affordable ebook pricing:
When an agency model publisher fixes a low price for a backlist title like these, the publishing is putting itself in a position to learn a great deal about pricing, sales, and profitability in the ebook world. Based on my own experiences and those of other authors, I believe that the ideal Kindle Store price for many backlist titles is in the $2.99 to $4.99 range, and that most such titles, if they are quality books with a little bit of marketing effort behind them are likely to sell roughly twice as many copies if they are reduced from $9.99 to $4.99 or roughly three times as many if they are reduced from $9.99 to $2.99. If Hachette and other publishers find out that such formulas apply to their backlist titles, it could be a powerful incentive for them to lower prices wherever possible.
5 comments:
Thank you. I bought two other titles in this series when they were $1.99. I probably would have missed this window of opportunity.
Thanks for the tip. By the way, publishers today reported big increases in revenues from e-books (see http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/digital-book-sales-are-a-silver-lining-for-simon-and-schuster/19467269/). Why this gets linked to the introduction of iPad, given the relatively small numbers of e-books sold and the fact that it had no impact on first quarter sales, is part of the mystery of reporting on e-books. But the good news is that maybe the Big 5 will wake up and realize that pleasing e-book customers makes more sense than alienating us.
I saw these were on sale for the last several days, and after reading the descriptions, I made the decision not to purchase them as I currently have plenty of reading material. However, after reading your eloquent and persuasive statement, I went right back and purchased both books. We DO need to make a point to the publishers and I'm happy play my small part.
The Amelia Peabody "The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog" and "The Last Camel Died at Noon" are now both $1.99.
The two you mentioned in this post are back to the regular price. I would be thrilled if you helped reward the publisher for doing this.
correction: Hippopotamus Pool and Crocodile on Sandbank are still $1.99
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