For a couple months O’Reilly has had an  EBook Deal of the Day.  Up until recently the price of the deal has always been $9.99.  Now O’Reilly has changed the pricing and stated, “We’re varying the deals based on retail prices. You’ll still see $9.99 in the mix.”

Today’s title is $14.99 and something I don’t need.  There are a number of books in the O’Reilly catalog that are interesting and not on my wish list but the $9.99 price point is low enough that I’ll grab something I wouldn’t normally purchase.  Some examples of this are Beautiful Data, Beautiful Visualization, Using SQLite, and R in a Nutshell.  For $10 I’ll purchase a book on a whim, skim over the concepts and read the few chapters that are more interesting.

At the $15 price I wouldn’t have purchased any of these books.  Under $10 is a magic number.