Publisher Price Watch
Publisher Price Watch periodically selects 20 popular books from each of the Big Five publishers and analyzes their prices on five formats sold at retail and to libraries. Read more about the methodology here.
2026 Summary:
Since our first posting almost four years ago in May 2022:
HarperCollins library eBook license prices have increased at an annualized rate of 17.3% per year.
Hachette library eAudio licenses increased 36% year over year. Hachette also has the highest average annualized rate of increase at 13.1% every year in the last four years, followed closely by HarperColllins (11.5%) and Macmillan (11.6%).
On eBooks, license prices on books from Macmillan and Simon and Schuster are steady.
Library license prices on both formats from Penguin Random House are steady.
If libraries are seeing eBook circulation decrease and eAudio circulation increase, then the relatively flat prices on eBooks and the rising prices on eAudio may disproportionally impact their budgets.
Print at retail (Amazon)
Print prices on popular books fell 3.2% year over year and have fallen at an annualized rate of 1.2% per year since 2022.
Print sale prices are set by the distributor, not by the publisher so it is worth looking at the print list price, which is the "MSRP" the publisher sets. List prices on popular books have increased at an annualized rate of 1.3% in the last four years. The price that distributors pay is usually 50% of the list price, so Amazon may be keeping retail prices low by eating into its own margin.
eBooks at retail (Amazon)
Publishers, not distributors, set the prices on eBooks and eAudiobooks at retail, so Kindle prices show us that publishers continue to be set on a price around $14. The annualized price increase in the last four years is only 0.3%
eBooks for libraries (OverDrive)
If you ignore HarperCollins, the annualized average library eBook price increase is flat over the last four years. HarperCollins, with an annualized increase of 17.3% per year, skews the total average up.
The cost of a library eBook as a multiple of both the cost of a print book and a Kindle book continues to creep up.
eAudio at retail (Audible)
Publishers dropped retail eAudio prices dramatically between our price checks in May 2022 and December 2023. They averaged a 22.5% price decrease at that time. As of May 2025, prices have bounced back up somewhat, but the annualized cost of eAudio titles has still fallen an average of 3.6% per year in the last three years.
eAudio for libraries (OverDrive)
In contrast to the eAudio prices at retail, the prices on library eAudio licenses increased with all five publishers, ranging from a YOY jump of 2.9% from Penguin Random House to a 36% increase from Hachette. The annualized average increase over the last four years is 6.8%, a marked difference from the annualized rate for retail eAudio of -3.6%.
We discuss here some library data suggesting that when prices increase, publishers may simply be cannibalizing their own authors.
