Penguin Publishing Shrugs off Rand Customers with E-book Pricing

I think it was last summer, I was waiting and waiting for Ayn Rand’s book ‘Atlas Shrugged’ to make its way into e-book form. If I remember right, I think it showed up on the Barnes and Noble site first but their iPhone ebook app wasn’t the greatest at that time and I really wanted to have the e-book in Kindle form. My patience was reward and it did finally arrive and Amazon priced it at 9.99 so I quickly grabbed it. I wanted to find out what all this ‘Going Galt’ talk was all about. Now, this post isn’t really a review but the book is awesome and has a lot of meaning for our society today. It is well worth a read. What this post is really about is the current e-book pricing for ‘Atlas Shrugged’!

Once the ‘Agency Model’ hit it seems like Penguin Publishing decided it wanted to punish it customers and make the price of e-books ridiculous! The price for ‘Atlas Shrugged’ at one time was REALLY outrageous, I can’t remember exactly what it was, but the current price is still way out of line at 18.99 on Amazon. What is really strange is that Amazon is selling the paperback at 14.87 and even has a mass market paperback for 9.99! I even think Amazon pulled it at one point for awhile.

There has to be a reason for pricing this insane. I just can’t believe that Penguin is that unreasonable in pricing on their e-books. If anyone has any knowledge or insight into this issue please leave a comment.

A quick check on the Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Borders e-books stores show the same set pricing at 18.99. Come on Penguin don’t shrug off your customers e-book dollars!

One last note, the other night I received an email from Amazon that there was an updated version of the e-book that would be pushed to my Kindle. Supposedly with corrections. I am still glad I didn’t have to pay 18.99 for it!