Wednesday, August 18, 2010

W H Smith makes all e-books half price

17.08.10 | Graeme Neill in The Bookseller


W H Smith has made all its e-books half price, just days after launching a two-thirds off offer on its top 100 fiction e-books. Among the titles highlighted on its homepage are Chelsea footballer Frank Lampard's memoir, Totally Frank (HarperCollins), on sale at £3.75, Loose Women panellist Carol McGiffin's memoir Oh Carol  (Hodder and Stoughton), at £8.50, and Hugh Ambrose's The Pacific (Canongate), on sale for £10.

High street retailers have become increasingly competitive with e-book pricing since Amazon announced it would launch its Kindle e-book reader in the UK on 27th August. It also launched a co.uk Kindle store two weeks ago.

Waterstone's dropped the price of its Sony Pocket e-book reader to £99.99 last week. W H Smith  is selling the Pocket edition for the same price and also dropped the price of the Touch reader to £189.

When Amazon launched its UK Kindle store, Steve Kessel, senior vice president of Amazon Kindle, told The Bookseller the prices would be the lowest in the market. However, WHS is selling the Lampard memoir cheaper than Amazon.co.uk, which has it on sale at £4.86. It does beat WHS on the other titles mentioned above. The Pacific is on sale on the Kindle for £9.44 and McGiffin's memoir for £7.97.

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