Audible puzzle

Honeydog

Hmm I'm not sure that what I'm posting is exactly a vent but I'm puzzled about it so I'm going to write about it anyway.

I had a free trial of Audible. Chose a long, long, long free book which was fairly pricey (very money saving) and loved it.

So I signed up for the 24 book deal and am so far really enjoying the books.

But sometimes when I've found a book on the Audible site and there aren't very many reviews I'll pop back to Amazon to read the reviews of the paper copy. Here's the puzzle.... sometimes a book (eg Billie Morgan) will be listed as £26.49 on Audible but is available as a download from Amazon for £19.87 but why would the same audio book from the same company have different prices?

Any ideas? It doesn't bother me at all since through my membership I get them for way way less than that by using credits but I am puzzled.

Ta,

HD

pmduk

Whilst Amazon may own Audible, it doesn't necessarily follow that they control the prices audible set.

Honeydog

Good point. I'd kind of thought that maybe the people who browse the Audible site are people who already appreciate the great things about audio books whereas the casual Amazon browser probably doesn't yet. So maybe they are trying to tempt the first timer by pricing lower.

Or maybe they realise that a lot of people are using credits and they want to make the Audible books seem a better deal.

Guess no one is really sure. Maybe I'll ask the Audible customer services.

pmduk

I suspect pricing individual prices high tempts people into a subscription?

Evilm

Prices do not have to be consistent.

Honeydog

Evilm wrote: »

Prices do not have to be consistent.

Why not?

I can see why a CD should cost more than an MP3 download but not why 2 downloads from the same company should cost widely different prices.

I shall ask them this weekend and see what they say.

System

Audible are a subsidiary of amazon. They are therefore run as separate business's, despite the fact they are owned by the same people.

They will have their own managers and staff and therefore will set their own prices. They perhaps can't afford to offer the same prices as amazon as amazon are bigger. Amazon own audible but audible have their own offices and running costs and still need to make a profit in their own right.

Just because one company owns another one doesn't mean standardised prices across all businesses!

Evilm

What Goater said. Also they might have different overheads and different pricing agreements with different selling platforms.

Check out companies on Amazon, Ebay and their own sites - you will often find the same company selling at different prices. It always amuses me when I do comparisons and realise that I'm actually comparing the same company!

There are no hard and fast rules. They don't have to tell you where to find their products cheapest either.