Fun coincidence here. My Kindle friend Richard A. visited earlier this week to lend me his Kindle DX so I could check out the features of the new version 2.5 Kindle software upgrade on the DX hardware, and in the course of talking about everything under the sun we were talking for a moment about something that we both enjoy, which is quality audiobooks. Rick strongly recommended that I give a listen to Barbara Rosenblat’s readings of some of Elizabeth Peters’ series of Amelia Peabody novels, which he said, perhaps not in so many words, are the very apotheosis of excellence in the spoken word.
And I will.
But meanwhile, so soon after our conversation, I couldn’t help but notice that there are two Elizabeth Peters ebooks from that self-same Amelia Peabody series racing up the Kindle Store sales ranking ladder today after being priced at $1.99 each, apparently not by Amazon but by imprints of their agency model publisher, Hachette. No idea how long these prices will last, but given that they have been priced at $1.99 in both the Kindle and iBooks stores, one must assume that the pricing is no accident. Here they are:
So, if you don’t have these books on your Kindle yet, and you’ve ever wanted to give Elizabeth Peters a read, now’s the time. And while I am sure that the Kindle text-to-speech (TTS) feature is no match for Barbara Rosenblat, let me hasten to note that both books are TTS-enabled on the Kindle!
One more reason why you might want to try these at $1.99, if you are an advocate of affordable ebook pricing:
When an agency model publisher fixes a low price for a backlist title like these, the publishing is putting itself in a position to learn a great deal about pricing, sales, and profitability in the ebook world. Based on my own experiences and those of other authors, I believe that the ideal Kindle Store price for many backlist titles is in the $2.99 to $4.99 range, and that most such titles, if they are quality books with a little bit of marketing effort behind them are likely to sell roughly twice as many copies if they are reduced from $9.99 to $4.99 or roughly three times as many if they are reduced from $9.99 to $2.99. If Hachette and other publishers find out that such formulas apply to their backlist titles, it could be a powerful incentive for them to lower prices wherever possible.
? 
. 
to download 
‘s was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. A New York native, Judith lives in New England.
, which pushes Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alerts directly to your Kindle Home screen 24/7. And in the case of many free listings that disappear within a matter of hours or days, “right away” is often just in time. 
