Top 100 ebook and ibook prices.



Now I know you have been impatiently waiting for me to do another survey of prices of the top 100 bestselling ebooks. So here it is.

If you’re a wannabe author, like me, you have probably been doing a Kirk/Picard, as you contemplate the price of ebooks. If the price of ebooks dropped the impulsive Kirk would rush online to buy more ebooks. But the more pragmatic Picard would probably stop and ponder the effect on author’s livelihoods.

If you are wondering, I am behaving more like Picard. I am sticking to a new year’s resolution of a couple of years ago of not paying less than $4.99 for an ebook. But I do make exceptions when an author informs me that they have made their book free in an attempt to push it up the Kindle rankings (although I read somewhere recently that Amazon is making this harder, if not impossible, to do).
           
Kindle Top 100 prices.

Twenty-two of the ebooks in the top 100 were priced at 99 cents. When I last checked in January, there were 14 at 99 cents. In September 2012 only six ebooks were priced at 99 cents, seven in August, and three in June. This was down from a massive 34 at 99 cents in February 2012. So Kirk will be happy that 99 cents is becoming a more popular buying price once again.

But there were less ebooks at $1.99, with only 6, compared to 11 in January, and eight in September. Before that the numbers at $1.99 were too insignificant to mention.  

This time there were eleven books at the guru nominated price of $2.99. In January there were ten at this price. In September 2012 there were 16, August 15, June 22, and in February 32 at that price. So the steady decline of this price appearing next to one of the top 100 sellers has stopped.

Overall there were 37 books priced at or below $2.99, last time there were 35.

The next most significant low price was $3.99, with 13 ebooks. Last time there were eleven, and in September last year there were 14.

For a while I thought $4.99 was going to be a good medium price for ebooks, but there were only three at that price this time, the same as in January. In September there were nine and in August 11 at $4.99.

There were 28 ebooks priced between $3.99 and $7.00, that means there were 35 priced at over $7. Last time there were 38 ebooks priced over $7, 30 in September, 32 in August and 47 in June.

Nine were priced at $9.99, and eight at $12.99.

ibooks Top 100 Prices

I only became interested in ibook prices when I purchased an ipad in January. I have discovered that either a lot less Kirks shop at the ibookstore or authors charge more for ibooks, because there were only five at 99 cents in the top 100 in both January and today.

There were six at $1.99. And 17 at the ibook guru price of $2.99, compared to 15 last time. So that’s 28 at or below $2.99 as compared to 37 on Amazon.

In the mid-range of $3.99 to $6.99 there were 29 ibooks both this and last time, as compared to 28 ebooks. Fifteen ibooks were priced at $3.99 (19 last time) and ten at $4.99 (four last time).

Forty-nine ibooks were priced over $7 (last time 46) compared to 35 of Amazon’s ebooks.

There were six at $8.99, 14 at $9.99, four at $10.99, five at $11.99, five at $12.99, five at $12.99 (eight at this price on amazon) and four at $16.99.  

So Kirk would be more like to download ebooks as the top 100s suggest ebooks are cheaper than ibooks.

One ibook in the top 100 was The Rosie Project by Australian Graeme Simsion, it was priced at a rather expensive $17.99, as a hardcover version cost only $15 from Amazon. But I suppose the publishers have to somehow make back the $1.8 million they paid Simsion for his book. One thing is for sure, Kirk wouldn’t buy The Rosie Project at any price.



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