One of my twitter friends who lives in Europe and buys ebooks from Amazon US has noted some curious pricing. In his experience a title priced at $9.99 in the US sells for $13.79 (in US dollars) when purchased from the Netherlands or Portugal.

On inquiry, Amazon explained that:
[1] Price can vary due to publishers granting different rights to different countries.
[2] “…a number of factors, including the initial publisher price.”
And “Using Kindle If You Live Outside the United States”

(I feel compelled to note that my novels are NOT used in the pricing example above. They are currently priced between $4.99 and $5.95, but they still experience a price differential.)

Googling turned up this two year old article on pricing differences which seems to point the finger at cost of doing business and cost of data transfer: guardian.co.uk

But there’s one more interesting fact in all this. Amazon pays the author or publisher a 70% royalty on ebooks sold in the USA, the UK, and recently, in Canada. But for those books sold to other countries the author gets only 35%–and that’s of the list price, not the higher price.

This seems like an area where competition is going to inspire change very soon.

Posted on: Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Categories: Publishing.