Comments on: Price Survey of the Top 100 Bestselling ebooks.

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 01:37:50 +0000

Thanks for the info Anthena. I will have to check BookBub out.

By: Anthea Lawson

Anthea Lawson — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 02:24:21 +0000

Hi Graham,

It's the bargain book marketing lists you want to cross-check with. The biggest (over a million subscribers) is BookBub. When I ran a promotion last September, my sale book (discounted for only one week) made it to #28 in the Kindle store overall. Every single day, BookBub sends discounted books into the Top 100. People have hit the USA Today Bestseller list on the strength of a limited-time sale and a BookBub ad. So I think, while interesting, that your data is being corrupted by that phenomena. 😉

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 09:54:14 +0000

I just went and had a look at the current top 100 and the price listed on the book in the top 100 list was usually half the price or so of the ebook when I clicked on it to get further information. For example number one at the moment is Divergent. On the bestseller list it is listed as $4.99, click on that and go to the American store and it is priced at $10.75. But if I go to the Australian store it is $4.50. Only one of the books in the top ten list had a price close to that of what it was listed at when clicked on. That was a 99c book at 95c. This needs more investigation.

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 09:26:00 +0000

Hi Anthony,

The reason this post took so long to create was relearning how to make graphs using Excel. And then Blogger decided to mess up the formatting.

I think writers who use publishers only get about 25% of the list price, whereas the self-published gets 70% if the ebook is priced $2.99 or more, and 35% if it is less than $2.99.

Graham

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 09:23:06 +0000

Hi Garrett,

I have not come across a lot of authors plugging a discount on their ebooks, usually it is making them absolutely free for a couple of weeks. The question is then, which best seller list would they turn up in. The free list or the paid list. They may turn up in the paid list with sales boasted. Would discounting a book or making it free boast into the 100 best sellers anyway? Next time I do the survey I will check to see if the books are being discouted at that time.

By: Unknown

Unknown — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 08:14:18 +0000

Great post. Thanks for collecting this data.

One thing I'd love to know about this — what number of these books are being sold on a temporary discount? Since that's one of the most popular strategies to drive sudden sales boosts, I'd wager that you'd find a large, large number of these books that are on the top 100 list temporarily during a sales push with a discounted price.

It would be helpful data.

By: Anthony J. Langford

Anthony J. Langford — Sun, 09 Mar 2014 06:33:10 +0000

Very good graphs Graham!
Seems there's not much to be made with ebooks. The poor author can pretty much stick to the day job, save a lucky few. So much for a year's work.

What would be interesting to see would how much does an author receive if the ebook is not self-published, ie through a publisher-what percentage cut do they get?

Makes me depressed for writers. Still, it may encourage more people to buy.

Looking forward to future comparisons.