The May ebook price report from Douglas County (Colo) Libraries draws upon the USA Today 25 bestsellers list, which includes a nice mix of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s titles. Overall, 12 of the 25 titles are available to libraries as ebooks; eight are from OverDrive and 12 are from 3M.
With the debut of a new film version of The Great Gatsby, the novel makes a strong showing on the USA Today list. This one title does a great job of illustrating some of the issues in the library market right now. First, the consumer price for the print book on Amazon is lower than either of the library prices for print through Baker & Taylor or Ingram. As I have noted before, libraries may still be getting their print discounts, but the value of that discount is greatly eroded by the print discounts for consumers. Fifteen of the 25 bestsellers have less than $1 difference between library pricing and consumer pricing; eight of them are cheaper to consumers.
The wider-ranging USA Today list also reveals some additional fracturing of the market. Three of the books are Amazon exclusives in print, but are available as ebooks through Barnes & Noble. Yet in the case of The One Thing, the title is not available as an ebook through Barnes & Noble though it is available from everywhere else (including Barnes & Noble in print book).
A less desirable item of note: I do believe Random House has hit a new high for ebook pricing on these bestseller reports with the $85 Paris: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd. Given the $14.99 consumer price point (dropped $1 since launch), it will be interesting to see if the high price point (even for an 800+ page novel) draws criticism from customer reviews. Right now, most of the Amazon reviews are from Vine members who received the book for free.
A PDF version of the report can be accesssed here.