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Ron Benrey (@ronbenrey), posting on the blog Fiction After 50, lays out a rational approach to the art of pricing ebooks.

At first, we couldn’t understand why someone willing to spend $18 for two movie tickets would recoil at spending 10 bucks on an ebook. After all, a movie is a one-time event, whereas an ebook can be read again and again (and, with some ereaders, lent to other people).

We then we thought some more...

1. We paid for our ebook readers (which makes an ebook more like renting a DVD than going to a first-run movie).

2. Even more important, we know that ebooks (unlike movies, library books, or paper-back books) are cheap to produce. We think it’s unfair for a publisher to charge the same price for an ebook as for a paper book.

All at once, the penny dropped (as the Brits say). We began to understand why customers might perceive three to four bucks as a fair price for an ebook. They are doing an instinctive cost analysis and realizing that an ebook selling at $2.99 and a trade paper book selling for $14.99 can net a publisher the same profits. (This is eerily close to the truth when you consider the cost of printing, transportation, distribution, warehousing, and returns.)

Simply put ... there’s no reason for a publisher to charge 15, 20, even 25 dollars for an ebook — other than a seriously overdeveloped profit motive.

Read the full post.

Do you agree with him?

You’ll also want to read his post “eBook ‘Tipping Points’”

This article in Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) highlights the online tools that are enabling publishers to spread the word about their books to more targeted audiences — sometimes, at a much lower cost — than traditional marketing methods.

Simon & Schuster recently launched a brand-new way to connect with its customers through Foursquare, the popular, location-based mobile social networking community.

Users who follow Simon & Schuster Foursquare receive information and tips culled from Simon & Schuster books and authors when they "check-in" at certain locations, be it their favorite diner in London, a resort in Arizona, or the Pyramids in Egypt. For example, they'll receive facts about historic landmarks, a dish their favorite chef enjoys at a restaurant, or a tidbit such as 21 elephants walked across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884, proving its stability.

Read this article in full.

Somersault has identified more than 500 online services to leverage for successful social media marketing. Let us know how we can help you. And be sure to daily use our free SomersaultNOW dashboard, created especially for publishing and marketing professionals.

“Attention for Love Wins began in late February when the book trailer stirred debate on Twitter. Many bloggers responded to Rob Bell's claims about Heaven and Hell with outcries of universalism and heresy, propelling Bell into the top 10 trending topics on Twitter, and prompting HarperOne to advance the book's release by two weeks.”

Is this another example of how the right kind of controversy can sell books – at least in general market bookstores? Controversy hasn't been a reliable sales booster in CBA – outside of a few books like The Shack, and in that case perhaps it wasn’t so much controversy as the enthusiastic personal word-of-mouth conversation that sold the book.

It'll be interesting to see whether controversy helps sell Love Wins in CBA and if stores will stock it if enough people come in requesting it. Another question to ponder: do people shop in CBA bookstores to buy books they expect to disagree with? Or do most consumers go into a CBA bookstore to buy books that affirm their beliefs?

What are your thoughts on this from a bookselling perspective?

According to this article in Medill Reports, “analysts say retail bookstore chains will cease to exist as we know them, underperforming stores will close, and bookstore chains will be reduced to a few localized stores catering to specialized local needs.” It suggests bookstores may succeed if they “keep unique selections of books and providing social space to their local communities.”

Analysts say roles played by retailers, publishers, and authors will transform as ebooks gain a larger market share. However, it’s the retail bookstore chains that will be impacted the most.

“Retailers have rent, they have space and they have obligations. They can’t alter very quickly. So if the velocity of change continues at this pace, it’s going to put a lot of bookstores in jeopardy because they won’t be able to adapt fast enough to survive,” said Scott Lubeck, executive director of Book Industry Study Group Inc.

Read this article in full.

Meanwhile, Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) reports that CBA executive director Curtis Riskey is still working on an "ebook solution" for retailers.

"What we are looking at is how can we maintain the relationship with our core customer base, but also give them something that is unique and different -- which sets our Christian retail channel apart," Riskey says.

Read this article in full.

What ideas do you have to help bookstores keep their doors open?

Like giving away the razor to sell more blades, Amy Gahran (@agahran) suggests that Amazon might be coming to a point where it makes more sense to offer the Kindle (@AmazonKindle) for free in order to sell more ebooks.  She writes, “Last year, nearly $1 billion in ebooks were sold, according to Forrester. By 2015, this is expected to jump to $3 billion. That's an awful lot of money to be made selling ebooks. At that point, selling e-readers at any price might just become an obstacle to selling more ebooks. So why not just give away some e-readers for free?” She continues:

In a way, Amazon has already been giving away Kindles for awhile -- in the form of the free Kindle smartphone, tablet, and computer apps. Right now, about 6 million US adults own e-readers -- but this field is getting much more crowded.

According to recent research from Changewave, Kindle currently holds 47% of the e-reader market. Apple's iPad (which is much more than an e-reader, so I'm not sure that's a fair comparison) holds only 32% of this market. Sony's Reader, at 5%, is just barely leading the Barnes & Noble Nook, at 4%....

The Kindle's core business model has always been to sell books, not devices. So a free Kindle seems like a potentially savvy business move.

Amy goes on to offer ways Amazon could maintain its market lead through creative initiatives, such as:

1. Buy X number of Kindle books, get a Kindle free
2. Free Kindles for Amazon Prime members
3. Partner Kindle giveaways

Read the CNN article in full.

How do you think publishers, content creators, and booksellers should prepare for the day the price of e-readers becomes negligible?

Kevin Kelly at Technium plots out the sliding price of the Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and suggests we could see free Kindles by November. Could Amazon conceivably package the Kindle in its Prime service? How about if a buyer promises to buy, say, 20 books then he or she can get a free Kindle?

How should publishers prepare for this possibility?

Read more at Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday).

Editor of PW Religion BookLine Lynn Garrett (@LynniGarrett) reports

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (@ECPA) has debuted a new consumer-oriented website. ChristianBookExpo.com (@ChristianBkExpo) is the new home for ECPA’s bestseller lists, list of Christian Book Award and sales award winners, and more than 200 author interviews and book trailers. Michael Covington (@m_covington), ECPA information and education director, says the top reason people visit the ECPA website is its bestseller list. So the trade group decided to re-organize its online resources to “cross-pollinate” programs and raise consumer awareness of authors and titles. www.ecpa.org will function as a social networking site for professionals in the Christian publishing community. That site will also be the home in the future of online industry forums, Covington says.

The @ChristianBkExpo Twitter stream is included in the Publishing tab of the SomersaultNOW dashboard.

What are your thoughts about the new ChristianBookExpo.com?

Wally Metts (@wmetts) is director of graduate studies in communication at Spring Arbor University. He’s also a consultant, teacher, and journalist. He writes the blog “the daysman.” In a recent post he reviews the current state of affairs in bookselling and concludes, “It’s the end of the bookstore as we know it. Wait, didn’t I see that in You’ve Got Mail? The Shop Around the Corner? But now it’s the big chains and not the independents that are struggling.” He identifies two new developments contributing to the current situation:

First, the Kindle got page numbers. The text book industry in particular must have experienced a collective shudder. And second, a new service, Lendle, now makes it possible to loan your Kindle book to a friend for 14 days. This too is big.

I’m not saying the Kindle is the biggest or the best ebook service. I’m just saying that the rate of innovation in ebooks generally is rapid and irreversible. And cost and convenience will win in the end.

He says it’s not the end of the book, just a new chapter.

Read this in full.

Book publishing can be a guessing game. Publishers are presented daily with hundreds of manuscripts from enthusiastic authors who believe theirs will be the most sought-after book of the century. Acquisition editors and publishers have to decide which manuscript has bestselling potential from the many that don’t.

We’d like to hear from you. What do you consider to be the best criteria for a book to reach the bestseller stratosphere? Write your ideas as a comment below and let us know. We plan to compile them into a list for a future post (along with our own ideas). Let the comments begin!

USA TODAY (@USATODAY) reports that, while “mega-chain” bookstores have crowded out independent bookstores over the last decade, it now seems that the indies are discovering a business model that might work in this digital age we’re in.

As measured by numbers, bookstores are in inevitable decline, says Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter. At the same time, he says, some "modestly sized, locally connected independent stores have found a successful formula" for surviving in today's market.

[A]bout 200 independent bookstores [are] in a digital partnership with Google eBooks, launched in December. The unprecedented partnership allows customers of independent bookstores to buy ebooks via a link on the stores' websites to the Google eBook-store (which also sells ebooks directly).

And Oren Teicher, head of the American Booksellers Association, says in an age when millions of books can be found online, the “curator skills” of local booksellers “to match a book with an individual reader is more important than ever.”

Read this in full.