As a Kindle owner with over 100 e-books–many of them only half read I must admit–on my Kindle, I have found that I’ve been buying a lot on impulse. If the product description excites me, then I will buy it considering the price is under $5. If its between $5 and $9.99 then I will pause for a moment to consider if I will actually read it all the way through. However once the price of an e-book passes the $9.99 mark, then I automatically don’t want to buy the book, even if I really want it. My mind is telling me that if your practically going to pay full price, you might as-well get a dead-tree book.
The thing is, it’s so easy to buy books on the Kindle, it almost feels like your not spending money, but once the price passes $9.99 it does feel like your spending money. Just like Apple got it right with 99-cents per song on iTunes, this is where Amazon got it right as-well, $9.99 is the perfect price for new releases.
If all those book I didn’t purchase because they were priced above $9.99 not been, then I would have probably have had about 125-130 titles on my Kindle by now. I’m willing to bet many other Kindle owners are walking away from purchases because of pricing, perhaps its a psychological barrier which I have become used to which means I cant buy books above $9.99. One of the reasons behind my purchasing a Kindle was the reduced price for many books, now when e-book are being priced at $2 or $3 cheaper than their printed counterparts then it hardly seem worth investing $400 for the Kindle.
I realise that Amazon probably doesn’t set for most of the e-book on Kindle, so publishers need to get the message that the $9.99 price tag means more sales and that pricing e-books higher than that is stifling their growth.
Do/Would/Should you pay more than $9.99 for a Kindle e-book?
I agree 100% I will not pay more than $9.99 for a book.
Just the other day I read a review of a book that looked very interesting, so I went straight to the Kindle store to look for it. It was $15, and the hardcover was only $17. That just doesn’t make sense, especially considering there are no material or production costs for ebooks.
Needless to say I didn’t buy the book. I’ll get it from my local library.
I don’t know if publishers or Amazon are to blame for the confusing pricing of Kindle editions, but the sooner they both learn that ebooks SHOULD be priced considerably less than physical books they’ll both be making a lot more money on impulse buys and casual purchases.
I wrote about this on my blog recently – http://www.lightmykindle.com/999-top-price-users-are-willing-to-pay-for-kindle-books/
I think the pricing is in the hands of the publishers, not Amazon. After all, it’s in Amazon’s best interest to keep e-book prices low since it’s a selling point of the Kindle device. Publishers, on the other hand, may not understand the new technology and assume that customers will pay “normal” prices for e-books.
Hey CJ, great blog… +1 new subscriber.
yeah, your post affirms what I was trying to get across about the $9.99 being almost a psychological barrier.
I researched a bit more and it turns out that a lot of people share this view. There’s a post on kindleville from a few weeks back that kind of says the same thing;
http://kindleville.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-important-is-999-ebook-price-level.html
I don’t know what Amazon can do about it however, ultimately its up to the publishers to make the final pricing decision. I for one wont be paying more than $9.99 for an e-book unless its something exceptional.
Agree. I am impulse buyer on Kindle, have spent a LOT more than I thought I would, but for more than 9.99, I’d rather buy the book and be able to share with others when done. Of course, what this means is that I forget about it and never buy it on paper OR kindle. I believe I’ve bought close to 100 kindle books in past 15 months, none over 9.99.