Who's my favorite author?

Today, I present my very favorite author in the whole wide world, my wife:

The Great Divide in ebook pricing

I always enjoy getting Amazon’s email blast featuring ebooks by my favorite authors. I’m especially humbled when I see ours included on the list.

However, I received a blast one morning last week that caused me to nearly spit out and waste a valuable cup of coffee. A new release by an author I know was priced at $12.99. This author, while popular, is not even close to being a NYT bestseller. I was so stunned that I looked up his other ebooks. While this one was priced at $12.99 he had others in a series published by a different publisher that came in at $10.67. His own self-published books were $2.99.

Is he overpriced at $12.99 or underpriced at $2.99? Is he more talented in the books priced at $12.99 that he is at those he priced at $2.99? Does he not value himself as much as his publisher values him? Or is his publisher grabbing at the hope of making big bucks on his back? What’s the take on this pricing?

This makes me wonder what we are worth versus what publishers want to make on us.

I randomly searched for pricing on more authors—authors who range from totally self-published to hybrid, to authors who are most definitely not strangers to a best seller list.

Except for special deals, like 99 cents or free, I found the range on one popular author alone, to be from $2.99 to $8.39—this from a hybrid author who’s had books on the NYT best seller list. She is trad published for some, and self-pubbed for others. She has books priced at $2.99, $3.99, $4.99, $5.99, $6.99, $7.54. and $8.39.

Across the board, I noticed that authors published either by a Big House, or medium indie, were typically above $4.99, more like $7.69 to $10.99. A few like the one that made me choke on my morning beverage were way up there.

Several best- selling authors, like Patricia Cornwell, were $7.99 to $8.99. Most of Jeffrey Deavers’s were $5.99 to $8.99 except for his brand new one which is $14.99.

James Lee Burke’s were anywhere from $5.99 to $12.74.

So what’s going on with ebook pricing? Why the disparity in pricing? Most of all these books used for price comparisons were of the same length.

It makes me think about the Amazon vs Hachette battle that has been raging. Who’s making the money on the high priced books? Methinks it’s not the author.

If you are an author, what do YOU think your ebooks should sell for?

In the next installment, I’ll ask readers to weigh in on what they feel is fair market pricing, and do they buy books at full retail, or do they prefer to buy when they are being promoted, or buy the print books, etc. More on that in another post.

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