Why are ebooks stuck at 20% to 30% of the market?

Here are a few reasons ebooks are stuck at 20% to 30% of the market

1. Most well known authors have their rights with Publishers. Publishers price the ebooks high. Sometimes, the ebook is more expensive than the paperback
   1. This creates a negative incentive for the reader
   2. Buy the ebook version for $9.99 and have nothing except digital bits, which can’t be shared
   3. Buy the Paperback for $7 and have a physical copy you can share, or decorate your shelves with
2. Lower priced ebooks from self published authors are ‘disappeared’ from the ebook stores
   1. Look at the bestseller lists. Do we really believe that $9.99 books in obscure genres are selling more than $0.99 romance novels from some of the bigger self published romance authors?
   2. Look at some of the new lists being introduced in lieu of bestseller lists. Why do they have close to zero books from self published authors? Why do they have close to zero books at $0.99?
   3. Why are they 100% made up of Big Publisher books at $9.99 or higher, and ebook store owned imprints at $2.99 and higher?
      1. Do we really believe that not a single self published author is able to compete in sales or pages read with the large players?
3. It is in the best interest of BOTH
   1. eBook Stores
   2. Publishers
   3. TO keep ebooks priced high, to protect the sales of paper books
   4. Could it be that at some point of time the book stores figured out that it is better to sell $15 hardcovers and $10 paperbacks, than $0.99 ebooks
   5. If so, it would make perfect sense that Publishers are pricing ebooks at $9.99 to $14.99
   6. It so, it would make even more sense that bookstores make it tough for $0.99 books to get on to the bestseller lists

Tip of the Hat to TeleRead for discussing the Stagnation of the eBook Market

That brings us to our next question

How can we Reignite the Rise of eBooks?

we will discuss that in a forthcoming post