Ebook Best-Seller Prices Edge up; Tragedy Propels American Sniper to No. 3

american-sniperFollowing a slight decrease last week, the average price of a best-selling ebook edged up as several lower-priced titles were pushed off the list in favor of pricier ones. The average price of a best-selling ebook is now $8.60, up from $8.16 a week ago.

Heartsong by Debbie Macomber (Random House, $2.99), Someone to Love by Addison Moore (self-published, $0.99) and Witch’s Daughter by Paula Brackston (Macmillan $2.99) all dropped off the list and were replaced by titles like Lisa Gardner’s Touch and Go (Penguin, $12.99), James Patterson’s Alex Cross, Run (Hachette, $12.74) and American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle,  Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice (HarperCollins, $8.99).

In the past several months we’ve observed ebook titles like The Hobbit and Life of Pi (both Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) move up the best-seller list due to events outside of the control of the publisher. In both of these cases, highly publicized movies were released of the same title. In the case of the last book mentioned above (American Sniper), a tragedy put the book in the news and thereby juiced sales.

On Feb. 3, the subject and co-author of the book, Kyle, was shot and killed; the New York Times online headline currently reads, “Untouchable in Iraq, Ex-Sniper Dies in a Shooting Back Home.” Yesterday, his funeral was held in Cowboys Stadium in Dallas.

See the rest of the the best-seller lists for the week ending Feb. 10:

– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $10.00 and Above
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $8.00 – $9.99
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $3.00 – $7.99
– Digital Book World Best-Selling Ebooks Priced $0.00 – $2.99

Read and comment on our methodology.

Top 25 Ebook Best-Sellers
Week Ending 2/10/13
Rank* Title Author Publisher  Price**  Change
1 (1) Safe Haven Nicholas Sparks Hachette  $    6.28
2 (2) Wait For Me Elisabeth Naughton Self-published  $    0.99
3 (n/a) American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History Chris Kyle; Scott McEwen; Jim DeFelice HarperCollins  $    8.99 New
4 (3) Gone Girl: A Novel Gillian Flynn Random House  $   12.99 -1
5 (n/a) Rush (The Breathless Trilogy) Maya Banks Penguin  $    7.99 New
6 (4) Beautiful Creatures (Beautiful Creatures Series #1) Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl Hachette  $    5.80 -2
7 (n/a) Touch and Go Lisa Gardner Penguin  $   12.99 New
8 (16) Crazy Little Thing Tracy Brogan Amazon  $    3.99 +8
9 (5) Private Berlin James Patterson; Mark Sullivan Hachette  $   10.90 -4
10 (n/a) Lost to You A.L. Jackson Sapphire Star Publishing  $    0.99 New
11 (19) The Silver Linings Playbook: A Novel Matthew Quick Macmillan  $    9.99 +8
12 (10) Fifty Shades Of Grey: Book One Of The Fifty Shades Trilogy E. L. James Random House  $    9.99 -2
13 (6) Heartsong: A Novel Debbie Macomber Random House  $    2.99 -7
14 (8) Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three Of The Fifty Shades Trilogy E. L. James Random House  $    9.99 -6
15 (7) The Forgotten David Baldacci Hachette  $    9.99 -8
16 (9) Fifty Shades Darker: Book Two Of The Fifty Shades Trilogy E. L. James Random House  $    9.99 -7
17 (13) Mockingjay (The Hunger Games Trilogy – Book 3) Suzanne Collins Scholastic  $    5.99 -4
18 (11) Suspect Robert Crais Penguin  $   12.99 -7
19 (15) Beautiful Darkness (Beautiful Creatures) Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl Hachette  $    6.99 -4
20 (n/a) Alex Cross, Run James Patterson Hachette  $   12.74 New
21 (22) Until the End of Time: A Novel Danielle Steel Random House  $   12.99 +1
22 (17) The Racketeer John Grisham Random House  $   12.99 -5
23 (23) Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel Sylvia Day Penguin  $    9.99
24 (18) The Black Box (A Harry Bosch Novel) Michael Connelly Hachette  $    7.50 -6
25 (n/a) Beautiful Chaos (Beautiful Creatures) Kami Garcia; Margaret Stohl Hachette  $    7.99 New

* Previous week’s list rank in parentheses.
** Price reflects minimum price across all retailers throughout the week. Price may vary between retailers and may change throughout the week. Contact Iobyte Solutions for more information on e-book pricing.
Methodology available here.

To receive this information in your inbox every morning at 8:00 AM Eastern Time, subscribe to the DBW Daily below.

3 thoughts on “Ebook Best-Seller Prices Edge up; Tragedy Propels American Sniper to No. 3

    1. Jeremy Greenfield Post author

      Thanks for the comment, Daniel. I won’t comment on the character of the person in question or that of his deeds. I know little about it and am unqualified to judge.

      However, I do know that regardless of his sins or crimes, he was executed without a trial. And, at the very least, I’d consider that a tragedy.

      Reply
      1. Daniel Henrickson

        Thank you for the reply, Jeremy. I wasn’t judging Chris Kyle when I called him a serial killer — I got that from the subtitle of his book. Execution without trial is what snipers do, so perhaps “irony” propels sniper to No. 3 would have been more apt — unless you’d call Osama Bin Laden’s death a tragedy.

        Reply

COMMENT

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/ebook-best-seller-prices-edge-up-tragedy-propels-american-sniper-to-no-3/
www.digitalbookworld.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-30
71565
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:26OFLK6MCE4HAO6M22ZUY2CUYJ5IKXOY
<urn:uuid:dd28df9d-b037-417d-914e-e69267a8d881>
2017-07-25T22:44:15Z
34.203.153.55
text/html
sha1:BG3BM34XRXXZJ6LIKZOCG3NFHZGJMAU5
<urn:uuid:e5d1c0a6-8439-4f66-8050-c44f39e2cee7>
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/ebook-best-seller-prices-edge-up-tragedy-propels-american-sniper-to-no-3/
length
response
<urn:uuid:d9680abc-bda9-4f8d-b72c-810cdb3273ad>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-166-17-168.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-30
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf