The days when a single Kindle Daily Deal could catapult an unknown book up the New York Times bestseller list are probably behind us now. And big publishers are experimenting more and more with price promotions, so that a super-low price on a self-published ebook isn’t enough to help it stand apart. So as more and more and more ebooks are published, how have the mechanics of price promotions changed?

I moderated a panel on this topic at the Digital Book World conference last month. I learned a ton in interviews with my panelists and we weren’t able to get to all of it during the conference. Here are some of their most intriguing points and lessons learned.

It’s all about the shopping cart

The “cart” is an obvious feature of online shopping — but hasn’t always been a huge part of shopping for ebooks. If you’re reading on an…

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The Price of Ebooks

18 January 2015 by particularkev

The link below is to an article that considers the price of ebooks.

For more visit:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brooke-warner/what-are-ebooks-worth_b_6334402.html

Judges question Apple ebook verdict and Amazon’s role

16 December 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

In a new twist in the long running antitrust case against Apple, an appeals court on Monday cast doubt on the Justice Department’s theory that the company brokered an illegal conspiracy among book publishers, and asked instead why the government’s focus has not been on Amazon.

The 90-minute hearing, which took place at the Second Circuit Court in Manhattan, represented a major shift in momentum in a case that has until now gone completely against Apple. On Monday, the three appeals court judges suggested that District Judge Denise Cote might have been too quick to conclude that Apple’s pricing arrangements with five publishers violated antitrust laws.

“Would it not matter that all those people got together to defeat a monopolist? It’s like the mice that got together to put a bell on a cat,” U.S. Circuit Judge Dennis Jacobs told the Justice Department’s lawyer, Malcolm Stewart.

The cat in question here is [company]Amazon[/company], which controlled over…

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Apple’s $450M plan to settle ebook price-fixing gets green light

22 November 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

Apple could begin paying out $400 million worth of cash and ebook credits to consumers by the end of the year, after a federal judge approved an unusual deal related to an Apple-led conspiracy to fix the price of ebooks.

On Friday, Reuters reported that U.S. Distrct Judge Denise Cote approved a settlement reached this summer under which Apple agreed to pay $400 million to consumers and $50 million to lawyers.

Those numbers are conditional, however, on an appeals court upholding a 2013 verdict in the price-fixing case, in which Apple was found to have colluded with five big publishers to fix the price of ebooks. The appeals court will hear Apple’s challenge on December 15, but few expect that the court will disturb the verdict.

In the event the appeals court does send back the verdict to be reconsidered, Apple will instead pay only $50 million to consumers plus $20 million to the lawyers instead.

The unusual…

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In Amazon/Hachette deal, ebook agency pricing is a winner

15 November 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

In the deal that Amazon and Hachette Book Group finally reached Thursday after months of bitter negotiations, we don’t really know which side “won,” if one side did. But one survivor — perhaps surprisingly — was agency pricing for ebooks, the practice through which the publisher sets an ebook’s price and the retailer takes a commission.

Hachette said in a letter to authors and agents Thursday:

The new agreement delivers considerable benefits. It gives us full responsibility for the consumer prices of our ebooks. This approach, known as the Agency model, protects the value of our authors’ content, while allowing the publisher to change ebook prices dynamically to maximize sales.

That wasn’t a foregone conclusion. In 2010, [company]Amazon[/company] was vehemently opposed to agency pricing, though it ultimately capitulated. Agency pricing was at the heart of the of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and book publishers in 2012, in which…

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Updated: Amazon and Hachette finally reach deal; Hachette will set its ebook prices

15 November 2014 by particularkev

Gigaom

Amazon and book publisher Hachette Book Group have finally reached a deal in the negotiations that have been going on since May. For months, Amazon removed pre-orders on Hachette titles, shipped them with delays and would not discount them.

The new agreement, announced in a joint press release Thursday, covers both print and ebooks.

“This is great news for writers,” Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch said in a statement. “The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It gives Hachette enormous marketing capability with one of our most important bookselling partners.”

“We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike,” David Naggar, VP of Kindle, said in a statement.

When the new ebook terms take place in early 2015, “Hachette will have responsibility for setting consumer prices of its…

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