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Ebook Bestsellers and EbookPricing StrategiesUpdate spring 2014The retail price of a book, and the practicesand rules governing that price, provide oneof the key references for the understandingof the status and the evolution of a givenmarket. Ebooks have strongly confirmed that stance.Debates and battles over ebook pricing in the US andUKIn the US, the legal battle over the agency model againstApple and five major US publishing groups on their respectiveroles in an ebook price fixing “conspiracy” hasbeen understood as a watershed decision.In Canada, four major US publishing groupos, HachetteBook group, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon & Schusterhave signed an agreement with competition authoritiesto lower ebook prices. (Livres Hebdo, 7 February 2014).In the United Kingdom, heavy discounting of ebooks bydistributors - as Sony, at first, and then Amazon as well asBarnes & Noble through its Nook decided to price selectedfrontlist titles at only 20 (or later 99) pence - has heavilyimpacted on both publishers’ revenues, who would benefitfrom surging sales of those titles that had been pickedfor the campaigns, and the competition between retailplatforms. (For a detailed discussion, see the market closeups on the US and UK, as well as here below in the chapteron selfpublishing the US controversy on pricing and authorearnings).Consumers are remarkably devided in their expectations,according to the “Digital Census”, released by The Booksellerin January 2014, as over a third think that ebooksshould sell for slightly less than their print equivalents,while 27.2 percent expect ebooks to sell for significantlyless. (The Bookseller: Digital Census, January 2014).Contradictory pricingstrategies in EuropeIn continental Europe, the importance attributed to pricingis well reflected in numerous countries’ choice of regulatingthe retail price of a book, which is set by the publisher,not the retailer, and by often reduced rates of VATfor printed works. As a result, book prices have been largelystable on average in recent years. This is about to changesignificantly as the traditional consens based equilibriumis seriously challenged by the impact from ebooks.Tracking ebook developments on a per title bases acrossEurope is difficult as, aside from the UK, no authoritativeebook charts have been established at this point. Instead,we had to work with lists proposed by various leading onlineplatforms and juxtapose overlaps as well as differencesamong them.The simple question of asking, across markets, what abestseller is in ebooks and what it costs is leading to a setof complexities.Two basic approaches take shape. One is promoted byAmazon on its localized sites for Germany, France, Italy, andSpain that provides the sales rank for ebooks by units sold,regardless of the retail price, as long as the book is notoffered for free. Long novels at €14.99 and digital shorts at€0.89 live side by side. Self-published books, often pricedThe Global eBook Report 102