Comparison of ebook and ibook prices.

 

Price of Amazon’s Top 100 Bestsellers.

For the past couple of years, every now and then, I have checked the price of the top 100 selling ebooks on Amazon. Originally the top 100 included free ebooks, which quickly came to dominate the top 100, but about a year ago Amazon split the free ebooks into a separate top 100. Then the top 100 was dominated by very cheap ebooks priced from 99c to $2.99. But over 2012, more ebooks in mid-range prices of $3.99 to $4.99 began to appear on the list. But that trend seems to be reversing.

I checked the top 100 today and found: 35 ebooks priced at $2.99 or less, including 14 at 99c. The last time I had checked in September only six ebooks were priced at 99c, there were seven at that price in August and three in June. This is down from a massive 34 at 99c in February 2011.

Eleven ebooks were priced at $1.99, which I noted in September “had resurfaced as a frequent price in the best seller list, with eight ebooks at that price. The previous two times I had checked the number of ebooks priced at $1.99 was too insignificant to mention.

Ten were priced at the ebook guru price of $2.99, which is continuing its slow decline as a dominant price. In September there were 16, August 15, June 22, and in February 32 at that price.

This time around there were 11 ebooks at $3.99 which compares favourably to 14 last time. But the number priced at $4.99 dramatically dropped to only three, whereas in September there were nine and in August 11 at that price.

Thirty-eight ebooks were priced $7 or more this time, compared to 30 in September, 32 in August and 47 in June.

I commented last time that the mid-range of prices, $3.99 to $6.99, with 36 ebooks, seems to be becoming more popular. But this time there were only 23 in that price range.   
 

Price of Ibooks.

Since I have recently purchased an ipad, I am now a bit more interested in the price of ibooks. So today I looked at the top 100 bestselling ibooks for the first time. I found that in many ways their prices mirror Amazons.

Five ibooks were 99c. Fifteen were at the ebook guru price of $2.99. Overall 23 were priced at or under $2.99, compared to 35 of Amazons.

In the mid-range of $3.99 to $6.99 there were 29 ibooks as compared to 36 ebooks. Fifteen ibooks were priced at $3.99 and ten at $4.99.

Forty-six ibooks were priced over $7 as compared to 38 of Amazon’s ebooks.

So the range of prices on the Amazon and Apple top 100 best sellers, at least for today, are very similar, with Amazon’s being slightly cheaper. This surprised me as I expected Amazon’s ebooks to be much cheaper than Apple’s ibooks because of a perceived dominance of Amazon’s bestseller list by cheaper self-published books and because Apple had tried to give the publishers a better deal until recent court cases.