Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World reports on the average price patterns of ebook bestsellers over the past few months.
Average Price of Ebook Best-Sellers Jumps; Divergent Dominance Continues
ePublish Yourself Intelligence
Jeremy Greenfield reports:
- The average price of bestselling ebooks rose to $7.49 this week
- The all-time low (average price), as recorded by Digital Book World, was in December 2013
- The average price has increased more than 40% in the past two months
- Digital Book World attributes this to higher-priced ebooks from the Big Five publishers, who are also better represented on the bestseller list this month
- Veronica Roth’s Divergent series (HarperCollins) continues it dominance of the bestseller list
ePublish Yourself! analysis
While this is likely a negative development for readers, indie-authors are likely positioned to benefit from higher average ebook prices (especially when this average is skewed by titles coming from Big Five publishers). Indie-authors, by and large, often use price as a principal competitive advantage, and large publishers are showing that they are either less-equipped, or perhaps less-inclined, to compete using this strategy.