Thursday, October 14, 2010

PRIDE GOETH

Pride Goeth Before a Falling Price: Is There a Price Cut in the Works for Follett's Giant eBook?


By Stephen Windwalker 
10.14.2010, 1 pm Eastern

Is there a price cut in the works for the ridiculously priced ebook edition of Ken Follett's sweeping historical saga Fall of Giants? The ebook price has been set so far at $19.99 by agency model price fixer Penguin and its Dutton imprint, but ebook sales have sputtered a bit in the past five days since we posted here Saturday that iPad owners would do better buying the complete unabridged 30-hour Audible.com audiobook of Fall of Giants, at a price that would range anywhere from $0.00 to $14.95 depending on their enrollment and billing plan status, and enjoying John Lee's lovely narration on their iPads.

The ebook's Kindle Store ranking has fallen from #12 to #18 since that post, but now there's an indication that Penguin may be relenting and allowing Amazon to slash the price in half. Although the price on the ebook's Kindle Store product detail page still shows as $19.99 as of 12:45 PM Eastern time today, October 14, the screenshot below shows Amazon's pop-up widget for the title showing a $9.99 price for the same listing of Fall of Giants at the same point in time:


So, we'll see if there is a big price cut in the works. The $9.99 on the hovercraft widget indicates that a $9.99 price point has been entered into the system somewhere in Amazon's Kindle Store infrastructure, and we've seen cases before where price discrepancies eventually synchronized and fell into place. When I clicked on the buy button, the next screen display also indicated a $9.99 price, but there did seem to be a glitch somewhere since ordinarily we do not see a shopping cart page when we are making Kindle content purchase:
The price on other ebook venues remains at $19.99 as of this report.

If the ebook price for Fall of Giants is reduced to the $9.99 level for which many Planet iPad citizens often hold out, it could be quite a coup for iPad owners everywhere, and perhaps a bit of a blow to agency model arrogance. After all, if they can't sustain an agency model price for 985 pages by Ken Follett, there might not soon be a better stalking horse for their sinister schemes.

Tip: Amazon allows returns and refunds of previously purchased Kindle Store titles within 7 days of purchase.  Click here to contact Kindle Support
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