Pachinko

One of the best books I read in 2024 was Min Jin Lee’s novel about four generations of a Korean family spanning the 20th century. When I bought Pachinko, I didn’t know if or when I would actually read it. Amazon advertised it for $2.99 at the start of their Black Friday 2023 sales blitz and the deal seemed too good to pass up. Early in January, I dutifully opened this book I had purchased (leased), read a few pages, and got hooked.

This year, I also bought The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings on a similar sale. Deep discounting is a great marketing tool for ebooks not only for pulling in readers it might otherwise miss, but due to the added exposure from climbing bestseller lists. I’m curious about the strategies behind ebook deep discounting. Are these a result of publisher-led advertising versus, or are they an internal choice by Amazon? The Tolkien book sales fit well with Amazon’s ownership of their Rings of Power television series. Would it benefit Amazon in some way to discount Pachinko between the Apple TV series adaptation? Or maybe there is no conspiracy here and ebooks just needed a remainder table equivalent.