In October, Publishing Perspectives editor-in-chief Ed Nawotka wrote a story that’s stuck with me. “What Author Could Possibly Need a Publisher?” appeared in Publishing Perspectives’ Frankfurt Book Fair daily (PDF). The story was about 50 Shades of Grey, the erotic trilogy by E.L. James that began its life as Twilight fan fiction and was then published by a small Australian publisher before being snapped up by Random House’s Vintage in a seven-figure deal and widely distributed. Nawotka wrote:

“Simply put, amid the continuing economic recession, the publishing industry needed Fifty Shades of Grey. James didn’t need a publisher as such, but once she turned to the pros, her relatively modest success was turned into a maelstrom of money. And, for 2012 at least, put bestsellers — and one might argue, the publishing industry itself — back in the black.”

Four of the authors on Amazon’s 2012 adult top-ten list — which counts Kindle and print copies together — either originally self-published their books or published through very small publishers. Here they are, including the traditional publishers they signed with:

1. Fifty Shades Freed: Book Three of the Fifty Shades Trilogy by E. L. James (first released in January 2012 by The Writer’s Coffee Shop; acquired by Random House in March 2012)

3. Fifty Shades Trilogy: Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, Fifty Shades Freed 3-volume Boxed Set by E. L. James (Random House)

4. Bared to You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day (ebook self-published on April 3, 2012; acquired by Penguin in May 2012)

6. The Marriage Bargain by Jennifer Probst (ebook first released by Entangled Publishing on February 14, 2012; acquired by Simon & Schuster in August 2012)

7. Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel by Sylvia Day (the second book in the trilogy, published by Penguin on October 3, 2012)

In a statement, Sara Nelson, Amazon’s director of books and Kindle, said it’s “interesting to note that four of the five contemporary romance titles in the top 10 list, including the Fifty Shades trilogy, were originally independently published and went on to become huge best sellers.” That’s true but leaves out what happened between the books being independently published and becoming huge bestsellers: A traditional publisher entered the scene.

I don’t want to downplay the success of these titles before they were traditionally published and distributed in print. 50 Shades, Bared to You and The Marriage Bargain all hit the New York Times ebook bestseller list before being acquired by big publishers. The 50 Shades trilogy had sold 250,000 copies, mostly as ebooks, before it was bought by Random House; The Marriage Bargain sold over 150,000 copies as an ebook in its first three months of publication, before it was bought by Simon & Schuster. But the books either weren’t in print or were only available via print-on-demand. In June, Sylvia Day told BookPage:

The biggest and most obvious advantage to traditional publishing is the print run and distribution for Bared to You. There’s no way I would’ve come anywhere near 500,000 print copies, nor would Bared have ever been found in Walmart, Target, Costco, BJs, Kroger, etc. as a self-published book.

The remaining five books on Amazon’s list were traditionally published. There are no solely self-published titles on the list.

“The Hunger Games” is published by Scholastic, which reported in July that the trilogy has sold over 50 million copies in the United States. Amazon did not break out how many copies it has sold.

“Since debuting in 2008, Katniss Everdeen and the Hunger Games have taken the world by storm, much as Harry Potter did a decade before,” Sara Nelson, Amazon.com editorial director of books and Kindle, said in the release. “Interestingly, this series is only three books versus Harry Potter’s seven, and to achieve this result in just four years is a great testament to both the popularity of the work and, we think, the growth in reading digitally during that time. Customers love these books and all three titles are consistently on our Top 10 lists in both print and Kindle formats, and The Hunger Games is also the most-borrowed book in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.”

Amazon UK announced earlier this month that E. L. James, author of erotic trilogy “50 Shades of Grey,” is Amazon UK’s bestselling author of all time, beating Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling.

As Andrew Rhomberg of Jellybooks noted on Twitter, a would-be parody of 50 Shades of Grey called 50 Shades of Black & Blue by I B Naughtie (ha ha) has risen to #41 on the Amazon Kindle Store’s UK Bestseller list despite terrible reviews. Not far behind it is another “parody” called 50 Shades of Red, White & Blue by Maggie Muff (again, ha ha).

In the case of the “Black & Blue” parody, the customer reviews are beyond scathing. Readers blast the work as unfunny, badly written and too short or else complain that they purchased it by mistake. Reviews for its comedic competitor are better (though one wonders about their legitimacy — i.e., “I have read many many books but i have never ever came across one as funny as this.”)

In the bigger picture, the 50 Shades imitators raise questions about how digital authors and Amazon will respond to the problem of parody in the e-book age. Rip-offs masquerading as parodies are nothing new, of course — recall the late JD Salinger’s recent lawsuit to shut down “60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye.” The problem is that real parody is an essential element of free expression and that courts are rightfully reluctant to use copyright law to suppress genuine social commentary.

In the past, a parody publisher had to invest considerable money into printing costs while the publisher of the original could go to court to challenge any blatant rip-offs. Now it costs next to nothing for an opportunist to quickly publish a thin imitation of a bestseller and then slap a “parody” label on it (and hide beyond the shield of free expression). Meanwhile, the original author is unlikely to have the legal resources to challenge a dozen instant imitators.

This leaves the question of Amazon’s role in policing parodies. The company already has a spotty track record in screening for out-and-out forgeries, but that is a different issue from the parody question. Amazon should not have to be in a position of deciding the tricky legal question of what is a parody and what is not. The solution may instead lie in the retailer employing an authentication service that highlights original works and slaps disclaimers on imitators.

This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

This week’s featured title: ”Easy” by Tammara Webber. Webber self-published the book on May 24. It hits the New York Times e-book fiction list this week at #21.

What it’s about: “Easy” is the story of two college students whose lives intersect during a traumatic event, bringing the possibility of love and healing to them both. Webber categorizes “Easy” as a “mature young adult/new adult” title. “That’s a category many authors believe should exist,” she says. “The stories generally feature college-aged characters and are written for readers 17 and up, in line with R-ratings for films and M-ratings for games.” She’s self-published three other books in the category — “Between the Lines,” “Where You Are,” and “Good for You.”

Webber graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2005, and worked there as an academic advisor after graduation. Five months ago, she decided to quit her job to focus on writing full time. “I spent the majority of my life on a college campus in one capacity or another, and I’m very comfortable writing within that age group,” she says. She’s written three other books

How it became a bestseller: “Honestly, I have no idea,” Webber says. “I’ve never paid for advertising for any of my books.” She posted the cover and description on Goodreads in advance of the book’s publication, and about 2,500 users saved it to their shelves before it was released. The book gets a B+ romance review site on Dear Author, where Jane Litte writes, “More like this please.”

“Easy” is $3.99 on … Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble Nook | Apple iBookstore

New York Times bestseller list, week of 6/24/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 6/14/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

This week’s featured title: ”Bared to You” by Sylvia Day. It’s #20 on the New York Times e-book bestsellers list this week and

What it’s about: The first in a trilogy, this erotic novel tells the story of a recent college grad, Eva, who meets billionaire businessman Gideon.

How it became a bestseller: Day self-published “Bared to You” on April 3, 2012. The book immediately invited comparisons to “50 Shades of Grey,” the originally self-published erotic trilogy that Random House’s Vintage acquired for seven figures in March and that has now sold over 10 million copies. Jane Litte, who runs the romance blog “Dear Author,” writes that “if I were to recommend any book today to readers who enjoyed 50 Shades and was looking for another book like it, this would be the first one I would offer. However, Bared to You is far better written with much hotter sex scenes.”

Like “Fifty Shades of Grey,” “Bared to You” has now found a traditional publisher: Penguin’s Berkley imprint snapped it up this month and has already released the e-book with a new, “50 Shades of Grey”-esque cover. (That’s Day’s original cover on the left and Penguin’s cover on the right.) Penguin will release a paperback edition on June 6. (Day writes a bit more about the Penguin acquisition here, and notes that Penguin’s ability to get the paperback into bricks-and-mortar bookstores was one of the main reasons she signed up with them.)

“Bared to You” is $5.99 on … Amazon  | Barnes & Noble  | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 6/3/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/24/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

This week’s featured title

The book: “The Marriage Bargain” by Jennifer Probst (Entangled, $2.99). “The Marriage Bargain” is #11 on the New York Times e-book bestseller list this week, and #20 on the USA today list.

Copies of “The Marriage Bargain” sold: 152,668

What it’s about: A bookstore owner casts a love spell to save her home. When a billionaire offers her a marriage in name only, she accepts, but neither bargained for love.

How it hit the bestseller list: Probst, the author of several erotic and contemporary romance titles, built up her presence on social media months before the book was published in February. She did a 20-stop blog tour in early 2012 to promote the book. Entangled bought a Goodreads ad and “steady positive reviews began to trickle in from various outlets.”

A sequel, “The Marriage Trap,” comes out in June, with a third book in the series, “The Marriage Mistake,” due in the fall.

“The Marriage Bargain” on … Amazon |Barnes & Noble | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/13/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/3/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).

This week’s featured title

The book: “On the Island” by Tracey Garvis-Graves (self-published, $2.99). “On the Island” is #8 on the New York Times e-book bestseller list this week, and #16 on the USA today list.

Garvis-Graves lives in Des Moines, Iowa with her family and had “a day job until last Friday.” It was a contract position and she doesn’t usually work summers, so that she can be with her kids. This year, she left her contract a little early to focus on her second book before her kids get out of school.

Copies sold: 157,291 since its release in September 2011.

What it’s about: “On the Island” is a contemporary romance about an English teacher and her student. They get stranded on a desert island for three years, and over time romance blossoms.

How it hit the bestseller list: To promote “On the Island,” Garvis-Graves started out by running ads on Pixel of Ink, Kindle Nation Daily and Ereader News Today. “Those sponsorships sell out very quickly because they’re popular,” she says. “[All three sites] have Facebook pages in excess of 150,000 likes.”

The book garnered many reviews on Goodreads and Amazon and  hit the #1 spot on Amazon’s top-rated contemporary romance list in January. Amazon e-mailed Garvis-Graves in early March to ask if it could include “On the Island” in an upcoming promotion. The company didn’t give her many details, she said, other than that the book would be featured in a promotion at a sale price. Garvis-Graves agreed, and the book appeared in a “Big Deals” promotion that Amazon ran from March 18 to 25. “That was the last little piece of the puzzle,” Garvis-Grave says. It led to the book hitting the New York Times bestseller list for the first time last week.

What’s next: Garvis-Graves’ second book, “Covet,” is a work of women’s fiction about the effects of the recession on a couple’s marriage. She plans to release it sometime this fall.

“On the Island” on … Amazon | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Sony | Smashwords

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/6/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list. A * denotes that a title sold enough copies in digital format to make it to the “Combined Print & E-Book Best Sellers” list, and the # that follows the * denotes the position of the title on the combined list. Prices are e-book list price and do not take any retailer discounts into account. An [AP] denotes that agency pricing is currently in effect. I also mentioned whether Amazon offered a book as a Kindle Daily Deal in the past two weeks (thanks to the reader who suggested that).

fiction

8. “On the Island,” Tracey Garvis-Graves (self-published)*(#11) $2.99 [AP]
11. “Fifty Shades Trilogy,” E.L. James (Random House/Knopf Doubleday)*(#12) $29.99 [AP]
12. ”The Marriage Bargain,” Jennifer Probst (self-published)*(#13) $2.99 [AP]
15. “A Matter of Honor,” Jeffrey Archer (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)*(#19) $2.99 [AP]
17. “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” John Irving (HarperCollins)*(#31) $9.99 [AP]
24. “The Mill River Recluse,” Darcie Chan (self-published) $0.99 [AP]
26. “A Song of Ice and Fire” (box set), George R.R. Martin (Random House) $29.99 [AP]
29.  ”Beautiful Disaster,” Jamie McGuire (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
34. “Accidentally Married to…A Vampire?” Mimi Jean Pamfiloff (self-published) $0.99 [AP]

nonfiction

1. “Lifeboat No. 8,” Elizabeth Kaye (Byliner)*(#5) $1.99
19. “After Friday Night Lights,” Buzz Bissinger (Byliner)*(#32) $2.99
21. “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord (Open Road)*(#1) $14.99. Kindle Daily Deal 4/13/12
26. “Bad Religion,” Ross Douthat (Simon & Schuster/Free Press)*(#29) $12.99 [AP]
27. “Auschwitz,” Miklos Nyiszli (Skyhorse) $2.99
28. “The Rich and the Rest of Us,” Tavis Smiley and Cornel West (Hay House) $7.99 [AP]
35. “Unorthodox,” Deborah Feldman (Simon & Schuster) $10.99 [AP]

USA Today bestseller list, week of 4/26/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-30 where e-books outsold print, including their position on the list. Prices are e-book list price and do not take any retailer discounts into account. An [AP] denotes that agency pricing is currently in effect.

1. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
3. “Fifty Shades Darker,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
7. “The Lucky One,” Nicholas Sparks (Hachette/Grand Central) $7.99 [AP]
8. “The Witness,” Nora Roberts (Penguin/Putnam) $TK [AP]
9. “The Innocent,” David Baldacci (Hachette/Grand Central) $TK [AP]
12. “Unnatural Acts,” Stuart Woods (Penguin/Putnam) $TK [AP]
13. “Guilty Wives,” James Patterson (Hachette/Little, Brown) $12.99 [AP]
14. “What Doesn’t Kill You,” Iris Johansen (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) $TK [AP]
16. “On the Island,” Tracey Garvis-Graves (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
18. “A Game of Thrones,” George R.R. Martin (Random House/Bantam) $8.99 [AP]
19. ”The Marriage Bargain,” Jennifer Probst (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
26. ”Defending Jacob,” William Landay (Random House/Delacorte) $12.99 [AP]
27. ”Fifty Shades Trilogy,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $29.99 [AP]
28. “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” Stieg Larsson (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]

Photo courtesy of Flickr user redagainPatti

This week’s featured title

“A Night to Remember” by Walter Lord (Open Road Media, list price $14.99). “A Night to Remember,” first published in print in 1955, its the New York Times nonfiction e-book bestseller list at #1 this week. (Another Titanic-related title, Byliner’s “Lifeboat No. 8” by Elizabeth Kaye, is at #2 on the nonfiction e-book list. It’s $1.99.)

The book tells the story of the fateful last hours on the Titanic, and Open Road timed its release around the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. “A Night to Remember” was the Kindle Daily Deal on April 13. The company started promoting the book about a month in advance of its publication with a Twitter campaign. Open Road sent promoted tweets with hashtags like #titanicheroes, did-you-know facts about the ship’s sinking. “Those sometimes linked back to the book but it was mostly just a hashtag,” says Open Road chief marketing officer Rachel Chou. The company also ran display ads through the Google Display Network and an ad through A&E on the History Channel’s Titanic website.

Most e-book retailers did roundups of Titanic books, Chou said. Nook and Apple included “A Night to Remember” in the Titanic roundups on their sites and Amazon included it in a Titanic e-mail sent to customers.

Price as of this writing on… Amazon: $8.54 | Apple: $9.99 | Barnes & Noble: $10.99 | Google: $8.54 | Kobo: $10.09 | Sony: $11.99

New York Times bestseller list, week of 4/29/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list. A * denotes that a title sold enough copies in digital format to make it to the “Combined Print & E-Book Best Sellers” list, and the # that follows the * denotes the position of the title on the combined list. Prices are e-book list price and do not take any retailer discounts into account. An [AP] denotes that agency pricing is currently in effect. I also mentioned whether Amazon offered a book as a Kindle Daily Deal in the past two weeks (thanks to the reader who suggested that).

fiction

2. ”Fifty Shades Darker,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage)*(#2) $9.99 [AP]
3. ”Fifty Shades Freed,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage)*(#4) $9.99 [AP]
7.  ”On the Island,” Tracey Garvis-Graves (self-published, Kindle only)*(#7) $2.99 [AP]
8. ”The Marriage Bargain,” Jennifer Probst (self-published)*(#10) $2.99 [AP]
9. “Tiger,” Laurann Dohner (Ellora’s Cave) $8.75
11. ”A Matter of Honor,” Jeffrey Archer (Macmillan/St. Martin’s)* $2.99 [AP]
21. “A Song of Ice and Fire” (4-volume series), George R.R. Martin (Random House) $29.99 [AP]
25. “Victims,” Jonathan Kellerman (Random House) $13.99 [AP]
29. “Rock Paper Tiger,” Lisa Brackmann (Soho Press) $14  Kindle Daily Deal 4/9/12
33. “Beautiful Disaster,” Jamie McGuire (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
34. “I’ve Got Your Number,” Sophie Kinsella (Random House) $12.99 [AP]

nonfiction

1. “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord (Open Road)*(#1) $14.99. Kindle Daily Deal 4/13/12
2. “Lifeboat No. 8,” Elizabeth Kaye (Byliner)*(#1o) $1.99 
23. “Auschwitz,” Miklos Nyiszli (Skyhorse) $2.99
24. “In the Garden of Beasts,” Erik Larson (Random House/Crown) $12.99 [AP]
30. “A Stolen Life,” Jaycee Dugard (Simon & Schuster) $11.99 [AP]
31. “Unorthodox,” Deborah Feldman (Simon & Schuster) $10.99 [AP]
32. “Why Me?” Sarah Burleton (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
35. “Outlaw Platoon,” Sean Parnell (HarperCollins) $12.99 [AP]

USA Today bestseller list, week of 4/19/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-30 where e-books outsold print, including their position on the list. Prices are e-book list price and do not take any retailer discounts into account. An [AP] denotes that agency pricing is currently in effect.

4. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
5. “The Lucky One,” Nicholas Sparks (Hachette/Grand Central) $7.99 [AP]
6. “Calico Joe,” John Grisham (Random House/Doubleday) $12.99 [AP]
7. “Fifty Shades Darker,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
8. “Fifty Shades Freed,” E.L. James (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
9. “The Hunger Games Trilogy,” Suzanne Collins (Scholastic) (three titles bundled together) $53.97
10. “Guilty Wives,” James Patterson (Hachette/Little, Brown) $12.99 [AP]
12. “A Game of Thrones,” George R.R. Martin (Random House/Bantam) $8.99 [AP]
13. “On the Island,” Tracey Garvis-Graves (self-published, Kindle only) $2.99 [AP]
16. “A Night to Remember,” Walter Lord (Open Road) $14.99
17. “The Marriage Bargain,” Jennifer Probst (self-published) $2.99 [AP]
18. “Come Home,” Lisa Scottoline (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) $12.99 [AP]
21. “Tiger,” Laurann Dohner (Ellora’s Cave) $8.75
25. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Stieg Larsson (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
26. “Stay Close,” Harlan Coben (Penguin/Dutton) $12.99 [AP]
27. “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” Stieg Larsson (Random House/Vintage) $9.99 [AP]
28. “Defending Jacob,” William Landay (Random House/Delacorte) $12.99 [AP]
29. “A Matter of Honor,” Jeffrey Archer (Macmillan/St. Martin’s) $2.99 [AP]

“Titanic Disaster” is from the Peabody Essex Museum’s Russell W. Knight Department of Maritime Art and History.

Well, price appears to be part of the answer. Little, Brown dropped the e-book price of The Black Echo, the first title in Michael Connelly’s long-running Harry Bosch series, to $0.99 from $7.99 at the end of June. Over the past month, the e-book has become a bestseller.

Dan Lubart, principal of iobyte and eBook Market View, took a look at The Black Echo‘s rise for us. Before the promotion began, it was at #487 on the Nook bestseller list. It gradually climbed up the charts, then jumped from #128 on the Nook list on July 18 to #3 on July 19. It’s now at #2 on the Nook bestseller list. The Black Echo started out ranked over 100 on the Kindle bestseller list (Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) only publishes its 100 bestselling Kindle titles) and is now at #2. The Black Echo is #13 on the Kobo bestseller list.

Little, Brown is a division of Hachette, one of the “big six” publishers that uses the agency model for e-books. The publishers set prices for e-books–which must be the same across all stores–and e-tailers get a cut. Agency publishers are just beginning to experiment with e-book sales–some participated in Amazon’s recent Big Deals promotion, for instance. The effect of a price drop on The Black Echo‘s sales rank should be good news for Hachette–and for other publishers of long-running series. They, like Hachette, can pull in new fans by putting the first book in a series on sale. Hopefully, readers will get hooked and buy the rest of the books in the series–that’s 16, in the case of Michael Connelly–at full price.

Check out our bestseller lists to find out the most popular digital content of the day from iTunes, YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Facebook, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Last.fm, Android, and Hulu.

It is available to paid subscribers of the magazine via Fortune‘s iPad app (non-subscribers can buy an iPad edition of the issue for $4.99) or for $0.99 in the Kindle Store. The one place you won’t find the piece in full is on Fortune‘s website — but that’s intentional. Inside Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) hit #9 on Friday before falling farther down the list today.

It’s the latest evidence that publishers are getting more creative about offering content in different lengths and price points on different platforms to create new revenue streams.

Long-form journalism website Byliner published its first Byliner Original, a piece by Jon Krakauer that accuses Three Cups of Tea bestselling author Greg Mortenson of mismanaging funds for his charity, as a $2.99 Kindle Single late last month. The 75-page Three Cups of Deceit has crossed over from the Kindle Single bestseller list to became the #2 nonfiction title on Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) as a whole, beating out print titles by authors like Michael Lewis and David Brooks. The second Byliner Original, the 61-page Into the Forbidden Zone: A Trip Through Hell and High Water in Post-Earthquake Japan by William T. Vollmann, is the #4 bestselling Kindle Single and is #17 on Amazon’s overall nonfiction list.

One tip Fortune might want to take from Byliner: make sure pieces are long enough to make readers feel that buying them individually is worth it. “I bought this knowing that it was just an article from a magazine but I still felt it should have been more detailed. They could have at least put in some extras like interview transcripts or something like that,” one reviewer writes. Another complains, “Since it was not a very long article, I think it would have been better priced at 50 cents at most. An entire fully staffed newspaper costs anywhere from 25 cents to over $1 so, for just one article by one man (delivered electronically too!), 99 cents is about twice what it should cost for what you get.”

The fact that Inside Apple was released as a regular ebook rather than as a Kindle Single might have misled some buyers about its length. Fortune.com Managing Editor Daniel Roth told us that Amazon declined to include the piece in its Kindle Single program. If article-length ebooks take off and Amazon doesn’t increase eligibility for Kindle Singles, it will have to find better ways to explain to prospective buyers what they are getting for their money. Even if it’s only $0.99.

Check out our bestseller lists to find out the most popular digital content of the day from iTunes, YouTube (NSDQ: GOOG), Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), Facebook and Kindle.