lopaka47 wrote:
When I went to order a book off the B&N site recently, I noticed that in addition to the 99-cent asking price for the book I was interested in there were several other pricepoints as well, for the exact same book. One even went for $2.99, which leaves me with a question: Why the significant price discrepancy? Is my 99-cent version perhaps an abridged edition, one lacking the same content found in the same title selling for $2.99? I tried finding the answer in the database here but was unable to, maybe I was just phrasing my inquiry incorrectly.
Was this perhaps a public domain book you were looking at?
Many public domain books are available as free downloads from project Guttenberg and other web sites.
EBook Entrepreneurs download these free books (which can be of inconsistent quality) and upload them to B&N and Amazon via their respective self publishing tools and set a price for the books.
Sometimes the person doing this has invested time and effort in cleaning up formatting issues with the free eBook, and sometimes they just uploaded the free book unchanged to take advantage of people who don't realize the book is available for free (many times right on B&N's own website).
Amazon has taken (announced they are taking) action to curtail this practice. There is currently a discussion of whether B&N should do the same going on in the eBook discussion forum.
