Back in the day – when Kindle was just a gleam in Jeff Bezos’s eyes – writing eBooks to sell from your website was a great way to create a revenue stream for your business.
And it was commonplace for eBooks to be priced at higher prices than the ‘regular’ books that you might buy from Amazon. $37 was a common eBook price. As was $47. And I’ve seen eBooks at $67 and $97.
And I’ve got no problem with these prices – I believe the way books are priced is based on a model that’s no longer relevant in the 21st Century. I think that the price of something should be determined by the value it provides to the buyer – not by an artificial model imposed by a tradition bound industry that’s not essentially changed in 50 years or more.
For a few years – say from around 2003 to 2009 – you could create an eBook and set the price yourself. And benefit both from charging for the value that you provided to your buyers AND from actually earning the majority of the price that you set.
The rise of the Kindle has moved the boundaries though. [Read more…]