The Digital Book World E-Book Best-Seller list tracks e-book sales ranking and price data across six major e-book retailers with the goal of providing the most accurate picture of which e-books are most often purchased by consumers and at what price point. The full methodology is available here.
This week the average price of a best-selling e-book on the Digital Book World list is $7.22. Over the past weeks, there haven’t been any dramatic fluctuations in that average.
The uneventful average might seem to reflect the mix of who is publishing (entrepreneurial authors, agents, and digital service providers) and how their various pricing strategies play out in the market place. But in fact, only one title in the top 25 this week is not published by a traditional house.
And speaking of tradition and routine, many titles are holding on to their spots in the rankings. The top three titles among the 25 overall best-sellers remain unchanged from last week’s list, confirming perhaps the recent study findings that show a majority readers will pay the “cover price” for an e-book they want to read, while far fewer others hold out for low-priced titles.
Though well-managed discounting, as DBW observed last week, can encourage sales and even lead to a best-seller.
This week, the average price of a best-selling ebook is $7.22. That’s down a bit from previous weeks but still squarely in the $7.00 to $8.00 range.
E-book best-sellers from the week ending 8/4:
1. The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith; J. K. Rowling, Hachette, $9.99
2. Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon), Dan Brown, Penguin Random House , $12.99
3. When I Found You, Catherine Ryan Hyde, Amazon, $0.99
4. Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, Penguin Random House, $12.99
5. Divergent, Veronica Roth, HarperCollins, $3.39
6. The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon), Daniel Silva, HarperCollins, $11.99
7. Gone Girl: A Novel, Gillian Flynn, Penguin Random House, $12.99
8. And the Mountains Echoed: A Novel, Khaled Hosseini, Penguin Random House, $10.99
9. The Fifties, David Halberstam, Penguin Random House, $1.99
10. Second Honeymoon, James Patterson; Howard Roughan, Hachette, $9.99
Deanna Utroske is the Content Producer at Digital Book World and a member of New York Women in Communications, where she’s the Social Media Brand Director and actively involved with the Integrated Marketing & Communications Committee. Previously, Deanna worked in the editorial office of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, a publication of the University of Chicago Press.
