70% discount on Blair memoir e-book

03.09.10 - Benedicte Page - The Bookseller

The rock-bottom pricing of the e-book of Tony Blair's memoir, which is being sold for under £7 by Amazon, has thrown the issue of the bargain-basement digital pricing of bestsellers into stark relief.
Amazon's Kindle edition of A Journey is being sold at a 72% discount of the £25 r.r.p. for just £6.99. At Waterstones.com the e-book is currently priced at £14.99.
Most major retailers, including Waterstone's, Amazon, Tesco, W H Smith and Play.com, were selling the hardback of A Journey at half price on publication, discounted from £25 to £12.50 or £12.49. Asda priced the book at £14, the Book Depository at £17.29 and Foyle's sold it undiscounted.

A publisher, who spoke anonymously, described the Kindle pricing as "a loss leader" but added: "Lucky Random House, which is presumably still getting 50% of £25. Most political biographies are bought to be given away or to leave around the house anyway. From an e-book pricing point of view £6.99 doesn't look ridiculous because most e-books sold are old books [and so more
cheaply priced]."

Having dominated the newspapers this week, coverage on Blair's title dropped to about 12 full pages this morning.