Monday, February 14, 2011

Publishers Bundling e-Books

Happy Valentine's Day!

Friday's Wall Street Journal had an interesting story by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg titled "Publishers Bundle e-Books to Boost Sales, Promote Authors."

The article offers an overview of the e-books being bundled by a variety of publishers. Some bundle early books by one author, others bundle e-books by genre (i.e. romance) or by subject.
"'By bundling titles at a discount we're raising their visibility and making them more price-attractive,' says Mr. Klebanoff," chief executive of RosettaBooks.

Mr Klebanoff also says "a bundled price of $9.99 or less 'is definitely in a consumer sweet spot'."

Maja Thomas, Sr. VP of Hachette Digital, explained that her company has begun to bundle titles from an author's series together. She gave the example of three early Michael Connelly e-books being bundled for $17.99, which represents a savings of $1 off each of the three.

Sony Corp. agreed. They indicated that series bundles are selling very well.

On the other hand, Penguin refuses to discount. They put eight of the Sookie Stackhouse e-books together in one bundle and priced it at $55.99

Go here to read the article.

2 comments:

Kaz Augustin said...

$1 off each of three books? Wow how....generous. Be still my frantically beating heart. Correct me if I'm wrong, but even print anthologies along these lines (vs. the individual titles) are more deeply discounted; e.g. the CS Lewis omnibus, Tolkien, etc.

Maya Reynolds said...

{Grin} Doesn't sound like much at first blush, does it Kaz?

BUT, the price listed was $18, which means they were selling each book for $6, discounted from $7. That's around 15% and quite a way from the $9.99 price point they were pushing just last year.