Three of the big five U.S. publishers that signed new contracts with Amazon agreeing to an agency model for e-book pricing have seen digital sales decrease after setting higher retail prices for their e-books, the Wall Street Journal said, based on publishers' quarterly reports as well as monthly AAP sales statistics.
A survey by Codex Group found that this year e-books from the big five publishers cost on average $10.81, while all other e-books on e-tailer's site had an average price of $4.95.
Codex's Peter Hildick-Smith commented: "Since book buyers expect the price of a Kindle e-book to be well under $9, once you get to over $10, consumers start to say, 'Let me think about that.' " (When introducing the Kindle eight years ago, Amazon head Jeff Bezos famously decreed that e-books should cost $9.99 or less.)
Amazon's deep discounting on print books means that many current bestsellers are priced at about the same level for print and digital versions.
The Journal called e-book pricing "a Goldilocks problem for the book giants: For years they worried that consumer prices were too low, and now they are seeing the disadvantages of bumped-up prices. Publishers said the current pricing model involves some sacrifice but they felt it was worth it to keep Amazon in check. What's more, they have noticed a bump in sales of physical books that is possibly related to the higher price of digital books."