Michael Tamblyn set out Kobo’s experience of how non-fiction sells as e-books at Tools of Change 2012. It’s a backlist business to a far greater degree than fiction, both in Canada and the US. There are three big pricing spokes: the $21+ expensive STM title; the $9.99-$10.99-$11.99 bestselling frontlist or new release; and a lot of “little stuff” around $3.99.

On average, 24% of the sales for a new book occur in the first 30 days; after 120 days out, lower prices do better. Thus agency publishers are “taking radically different approaches” to experimenting with dynamic pricing models, some imprint by imprint, some all books marked down after a certain number of days, etc.

Tamblyn drilled down into a number of categories.

Here are a few: Biography, history and business books have a lot of price-point “tolerance” that is “not being well exploited.” That presents an opportunity for publishers.

Although the price points for books by big-name cookbook authors are not proving particularly attractive in the first month on sale – there’s too much competition from free sites – there is appetite for low-priced, small, curated clusters of recipes around a theme. Books devoted to specialist diets, e.g. gluten-free, can do surprisingly well.

And as yet, Tamblyn sees no big market for self-publishing here. “While self-publishing represents 7% of total sales worldwide, in nonfiction it’s 1% and very static.”