# .99c good or bad?



## J. Cooper (Mar 18, 2012)

Ive noticed on another topic about Indie authors needing editors, that people have begun debating whether or not people are allowed to complain about the editing of a novel 
when its priced at Free or .99c .... some people say yes, some people say no,

But my question is... for a new author to be taken seriously (and because _so_ many books priced at .99c are badly edited (proofreaded) and have given all indie books a bad image) should that new 
author price his book _Higher_, at say $1.50, in order to be seen as a well written book by the public? to be seen as someone who has put more money and effort into his novel, hence why the price is steeper?

(Please note, this is not an question about the quality of indie authors' writing or editing, but the image .99c now gives off.... at least i think it is lol)


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

I can't understand this prejudice against 99c books for the life of me. Some of the bestselling writers on Kindle -- Stephen Leather etc. -- price their ebooks at this or even less.


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## ciscokid (Oct 10, 2010)

A .99 price doesn't keep me away from a book. I've read so many good indie books that I got free that I know not to judge a book by its price alone.  If the book has a least a 4 star rating, and looks like something I'd enjoy, I'll download it.  I have to admit I have hundreds of books on my kindle that I got free.  So far I've not found a truely terrible one, yes some seriously lack good editing, but most of the freebies I've read have been very good.


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## J. Cooper (Mar 18, 2012)

I know, i dont get it either, ive got five .99c books on my kindle and i enjoyed them greatly, what concerns me is the prejudice the mass market is having against new books priced .99c would they find a more willing market (audience) if they priced slightly higher. to avoid that prejudice. if its possible too...


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## RubyRoyce (Feb 25, 2012)

For me it's rather the other way round.
99 Cent books have really made me look at the quality of more expensive books.
I often think: How does this no name author presume to charge 2.99/4.99 for a book that's short, technically below mediocre, boring or whatever, when others who are bestselling indie authors and who put in gigantic amounts of time, effort and even money to create a well crafted product charge the same price?
I read the sample and when it doesn't hit me on the head as something I could totally enthuse about, I am not willing anymore to pay "more" than 99 cents.
Maybe if it's written by an author whom I already know and cherish.


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

All of the above has cheered me up. I really was starting to think there was a 'down' on 99c authors.


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## Guest (Mar 21, 2012)

As with everything, it's on a case by case basis.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

There are plenty of very good 99 cent books by indies authors. There are plenty of not so good too. I think the OP paints with too broad of a brush. It's like saying all big publisher books are very good.

That said most of the 99 cent indie ebooks I have read were at a 99 cent promo price, on sale. I am a very careful shopper since my time is the biggest investment in my reading--just don't have enough to go around. I'll give a 99 or Free book a chance but first it must pass a few hurdles and I do the same with publishers books unless I really know the author:

1. Be a genre or subject I would be very interested in. I don't buy just because it's 99 cents. Buying for low price is penny-wise and dollar foolish since I will spend 7-12 hours reading the book, so the story better be good.

2. It should have a very good cover and title. Professional looking cover and an intriguing title.

3. It should have an excellent description and blurb which interests me.

4. I'll read a sample and look for problems, like formatting, typos, spelling, flow, grammar and style. I will also weigh the customer reviews. If it passes I'll buy.

5. All of the above takes about 5 minutes. If an author can do the above it is a sign they put just as much craft into the story.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

I have found some outstanding books at 99 cents.  It's a great way for an indie publisher to introduce their new novel.  I have done it many times.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

I've been saying from the beginning that $0.99 devalues the book and the perception of it. 

There are exceptions and I'm not saying I've never bought a $0.99 book or that I've never enjoyed one. But the vast majority are not just poorly edited or formatted, they're just badly written. 

Also, in my experience most $0.99 books are from self published authors, not necessarily from indie publishers. Unless it's a temporary promo.

The other problem is so many $0.99 books have horrible covers.

Lastly, the other thing that bothers me about $0.99 books is that most short stories are $0.99 too and sometimes to hard to tell them apart. This also devalues them, in my opinion - a full length novel for the same price as a short story? Something isn't right there.


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## J. Cooper (Mar 18, 2012)

fascinating, i suppose the question becomes, if you saw a book priced at .99c and it had (lets just say) the best book cover ever, and it matched your preferred genre, 
would you hesitate to buy it because it has a .99c price tag? 

Or do the reviews matter more to you in that instance?


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

These questions always seem to narrow for how my buying works. I mean the question is usually only about self publishers. I purchase a lot of books at 99 cents and 1.99 and 2.99 that are what I call sale items. There are lot of publishers, big and small, that put books up for sale throughout the year and I jump on them. There were many recently that would  have cost me 7.99, 6.99 and such, but I only paid .99 - 1.99 for them. 

I also buy a lot of stuff that is backlist. Once published and now put out by the author and lots of those are put on either temporary promos at .99 cents or are at the permanent price of such. 

In the genre's I like best there is a upswing in 99 cent (regular price) offerings. Sorry, but of those most are not really interesting to me. Lots of badly looking covers, blurbs looking strange and iffy looking reviews. It just takes a bit longer to sift through. To separate the short stuff from the actual novels, etc. 

I am not prejudice towards 99 cents books, but then I include all books into my answers. Those from Trad. publishers, those from Indy publishers and those from self publishers. 

I am always eager for bargains as I read a lot, but I want every book I read to be a potentially good book. I won't settle for less. I don't care if the book is 99 cents or 7.99, I demand it to be quality.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

J. Cooper said:


> fascinating, i suppose the question becomes, if you saw a book priced at .99c and it had (lets just say) the best book cover ever, and it matched your preferred genre,
> would you hesitate to buy it because it has a .99c price tag?
> 
> Or do the reviews matter more to you in that instance?


The reviews would have a big influence - temporarily promos excluded, I will not buy a $0.99 book unless it has a number of positive reviews which do not appear to be shills. There's just too many $0.99 books out there, even narrowed down to my genre, to read samples of everything that looks interesting.


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## Jorja Tabu (Feb 6, 2012)

In other businesses, it's generally believed that people who pay more also tend to believe the product is of higher quality than similar products that cost less--regardless of the actual worth.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Gentle reminder:  this topic is borderline for the Cafe. . . . but it's in the Corner so please keep your responses to the topic addressed from a READER's perspective and not from a WRITER's.

Thanks.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

Do a search on _Krista Ball + 99 cents + won't buy + do 99 cent indie books suck_ and you'll find my views on 99 cents


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Jorja Tabu said:


> In other businesses, it's generally believed that people who pay more also tend to believe the product is of higher quality than similar products that cost less--regardless of the actual worth.


And who decides this "actual worth"? 

Mike


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## flipside (Dec 7, 2011)

As a reader, it depends on how the book markets itself.

I buy some books cheap, usually because it sells in the hundreds of thousands.

I also buy some books expensively, usually from indie presses, because their print runs aren't that high (either because they know their target audience or because it's set up as a collector's edition).


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## VannaSmythe (Feb 28, 2012)

In my opinion the 99c pricepoint has less to do with quality of the book, than it does with the market accepted price for ebooks. I dropped the price of my book to 99c (after initallly offering it for $2.99) since I realized that, as a new author, it will be much harder for me to convince people to buy my book for $3. Especially given the overabundance of books priced at 99c, or even free. 

I do fear that this race to the bottom, namely indie writers setting the prices of their books very low or giving them away for free, could make it harder to later start changing more. I read in another thread that $2.99 is becoming the new 99c pricepoint, though I don't think that's true yet. There are still too many 99c books and the rational consumer tends to want to spend less (even if the difference is pocket change) 

So, to answer the origianl question, I think 99c is good for a limited time promo, and to get your foot in the door. Beyond that, I think books are just worth more


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## Jorja Tabu (Feb 6, 2012)

jmiked said:


> And who decides this "actual worth"?
> 
> Mike


Well, I was thinking of literal cases of the same thing. Two widgets are made, both are bought wholesale by two different vendors. One sells them at .99 cents at their 'Discount Bargain Bin,' and the other sells them for 3.99 at the Luxury Emporium. In the end, they both might actually end up making the same amount of money, but it's more likely that the latter salesperson will do a little less work and make a little more money--and that the perceived quality of their product is higher just because the price is.

I'm really simplifying a complex relationship between customers, their money, and products, but smarter people than me figured this out. I googled "economics perceived quality price" and came up with some longer articles examining this. The first is a quick slide show, but the last slide in it is exactly what I'm remembering, and it quotes a study detailed in the second article.

http://www.slideshare.net/jdinsmore/price-perception-the-placebo-effect-in-marketing

http://www.bus.lsu.edu/bedeian/articles/ConsumerPerceptPrice-MSUBT-1971.pdf

/nerdrant. TL,DR; the buyers decide, both in wholesale and retail!


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## Beatriz (Feb 22, 2011)

ciscokid said:


> A .99 price doesn't keep me away from a book. I've read so many good indie books that I got free that I know not to judge a book by its price alone. If the book has a least a 4 star rating, and looks like something I'd enjoy, I'll download it. I have to admit I have hundreds of books on my kindle that I got free. So far I've not found a truely terrible one, yes some seriously lack good editing, but most of the freebies I've read have been very good.


I totally agree with you. To have a preconceived notion that because a book is priced at .99 cents it's no good, it's silly, absolutely silly.


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## JBool56 (Feb 22, 2012)

I think any new Indie has to price low, or else they won't be noticed. But what I do think is wrong is that there's no straightforward way to tell whether it's a short story or a novel. Until Amazon start making this a category, I think authors should make it clear in their synopsis.


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## history_lover (Aug 9, 2010)

Beatriz said:


> I totally agree with you. To have a preconceived notion that because a book is priced at .99 cents it's no good, it's silly, absolutely silly. I just published my short story and I'm only charging .99 cents because it's only 33 pages. With that prejudice in mind I would have to jack up the price to $2.99 at least so nobody would think it was trash.


A short story is not the same thing as a full length book. I would expect a short story to be around $0.99 but a full length book priced the same as a short story (and not as a promo)? In my opinion, that's practically the definition of devaluing it.



JBool56 said:


> I think any new Indie has to price low, or else they won't be noticed. But what I do think is wrong is that there's no straightforward way to tell whether it's a short story or a novel. Until Amazon start making this a category, I think authors should make it clear in their synopsis.


Amazon do actually have a short story category but my understanding is that it is up to the author/publisher to categorize books/stories correctly so they are not always listed in this category. An author who can't be bothered making it clear in the synopsis is unlikely to be bothered to categorize it correctly either - and vice versa.

Short Story Category


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Ann in Arlington said:


> Gentle reminder: this topic is borderline for the Cafe. . . . but it's in the Corner so please keep your responses to the topic addressed from a READER's perspective and not from a WRITER's.
> 
> Thanks.


Quoting as I've removed/edited several posts where writers were talking about how they price their books. . . . that's a discussion for the Writer's Cafe.


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## montereywriter (Mar 17, 2012)

Usually I can tell pretty quick if a book/story has been edited well (or, sometimes, at all!). If it starts to fall down in the editing department, I simply quit reading. Don't have the time or patience for it. 

To me, it doesn't matter if it's cheap or free. You want to be read? Make sure you've got an editor!


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## sheldonchs (Mar 23, 2012)

Depends what you mean. Yeah, there are good .99c books, and there are bad .99c books. Overall, I think the whole .99c book thing can only be good. When I look at these books, the way I approach it is to filter down, using genre, title - does it grab me? - the blurb, and especially the 'look inside'. By then I'm already down to books I'm likely to enjoy. Maybe only 1 in 5 are really good, which makes it worth $4.99, but I could pay that and still get something I hated, but the main thing for me is, I've found a new book, and a new author, who I would never have stumbled across if I'd just settled for the higher priced items. It kind of mirrors my experience when buying secondhand paperbacks: wonderful finds that I may never have chanced on otherwise, because they weren't the books publishers were pushing (mostly older authors, out of print books).


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## brianjanuary (Oct 18, 2011)

I don't think a 99-cent price necessarily red flags the quality of a book (a lot of new authors choose this price to attract an audience). I have read some 99-cent novels that are very well-written and every bit as good as legacy-published books, and I've read some that are not professionally executed and quite put-downable. However, I can say the same about legacy-published novels--some are deadly dull, impossible to read, and badly in need of editing (grammatical and factual mistakes).


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## apbschmitz (Apr 22, 2011)

I'm trying to think of another product where the problem is one of such immense over-supply. Sand, maybe. You can go to the beach, fill buckets, take them home, and no one will try to stop you. If you need huge quantities, you pay mostly for delivery. Have a big pile of sand and want to get rid of it? At first you might try to give it away. If that doesn't work you'll pay somebody to haul it off. Which seems about the direction that fiction is headed. Eventually 99 cents will seem too much. Free will barely be satisfactory. Readers will wonder if they shouldn't be paid to take a chance on an unknown writer. Writers will pay for their habit; reading will become a revenue sector. Who can complain about the direction of the revenue stream when readers are more scarce than writers?


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## CarlPurdon (Sep 7, 2011)

If I don't like the sample, I won't download it even if it's free (or 99 cents). On the other hand, the sample really has to grab me for me to pay more than $2.99.


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## Angerona Love (Aug 5, 2011)

I agree with Carl. There are good and bad books for 99 cents.

I tend not to spend more than $2.99 for fiction on an unknown author and will spend up to $10 on nonfiction if the information is important to me. The sample has to pass inspection. I have little tolerance for lazy and flagrant grammatical mistakes or shoddy research. The sample is enough to convince me the author has dedicated time to ensuring the best book possible or the inverse.


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## Mark Jacobs (Mar 23, 2012)

Regarding the question of editing in 99 cent books, I think anyone who purchases a book, for whatever price, has the right to expect something that looks half-way professional including the editing job. Free books are a different matter. 

Of course, no amount of editing can save a poorly written book but I've seen some of those in book stores for $20.

By the way, if you find editing mistakes in this post, don't complain. It was free.


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## Rick Gualtieri (Oct 31, 2011)

I don't really think any price has a lock on good or bad books.  $.99 is popular right now, so the percentage of bad to good is probably higher.  However, I've picked up much higher priced stinkers.  

As others have said, read the blurb and check out the sample to get an idea.  And if all else fails and you really feel that you've been duped, vote with your wallet (ebooks can be returned within 7 days) and a review.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

I believe very much in the concept of perceived value. I'm sure some .99c books are great but it's like when I buy books out of those bargain high street bookstores, I usually expect them to suck before I start to read them. Particularly where self-published authors are concerned, I think a higher price also shows a Usign of confidence. Yes, it's harder to sell higher priced ebooks as a no-name author but if an author doesn't think his or her book is worth more than the price of a chocolate bar then as a reader I'm not likely to have much confidence in it either. In any case, I can tell from reading the "look inside" section on Amazon whether a book is likely to be worth it or not.

Chris Ward


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## Casper Parks (May 1, 2011)

The band, Pearl Jam rebelled against high ticket prices for concerts. That many of their fans could not afford it. A small number of bands also did something similar with CD prices. While not ebooks per-say, still along the same line. Seeing major publishers with ebooks hovering near 10.00 dollars is over the top. That said, an artist needs to make a living as well. 99 cents for an ebook good introduction price for an unknown author. Keeping the economy in mind, setting prices at 99 cents to 2.99 keeps an ebook affordable, making buying a Kindle or another E-reader more attractive.


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2012)

As a reader, price only comes into play once I have decided on the book,then I comparison shop for the best price on THAT book.  If store A has a book I want for $4, and store B has a book I want for $2, I buy from store B.  I don't select a completely different book that I have only nominal interest in just because it is 99 cents.  As a couple of others have said, it isn't about money.  It's about time.  If I am going to invest ten hours of my life into something, I want it to be good.  I'll pay more for a book I want, and I won't even take a book for free if it is something I don't want.

All that said, I am more careful about 99 cent books than other books.  I have rarely been "burned" by a higher price book.  I might not love every higher priced book I have purchased, but at least I still felt the book met a certain minimum expectation. Far too often, I have been burned by 99 cent books.  I use to buy a lot of books without sampling. I would just read the blurb, check out some reviews, and buy.  Then I would open the book and find gods-aweful formatting, incoherent sentence structure, and excessive grammar and spelling errors to the point where I had no idea what was being said.  So when I see a 99 cent book that looks interesting, I am much more careful with my purchase. I sample, I look at other reviews that reviewers have wrote to see if the reviewer is credible for me.

For example: I'm looking at a vampire novel. I love vampire novels, but HATE paranormal romances. I see a five star review saying how amazing this vampire book is.  I click the reviewer's name and see she also left a five star review for Twilight, saying it was "so scary!" but panned "Salem's Lot" as unbelievable.  For me, this reviewer has no credibility because her idea of a good vampire novel is completely different than mine.

I guess the irony is that the goal of the 99 cent price is to spur impulse buys, but instead actually leads to more careful purchases in some readers.


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## JBool56 (Feb 22, 2012)

> I would just read the blurb, check out some reviews, and buy.


I just wish they'd abandon the review system altogether. I think everyone is getting wise now, and checking out the reviewer's credibility, but then the time taken doing that, you might as well read the first couple of pages of the novel. If there has to be a system at all, I think it would be better if it was along the lines of 'would you recommend this book?' Something so simple to do, that more 'ordinary' people would feel inclined to participate. And something that could only be activated by people who had actually bought the book. Of course it's not flawless, but then what is?


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## Guest (Mar 28, 2012)

Considering the number of books out there and the wide pricing differences, I don't think a reader can make any assumption about quality. I mean, I've bought professionally edited paperbacks for a dollar. That didn't guarantee they were good or bad.


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## D. Nathan Hilliard (Jun 5, 2010)

I'm fine with .99 cent books and I buy a lot of them. They're a mixed bag, but the editing or lack thereof reflects on the author, not the price range.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

J. Cooper said:


> fascinating, i suppose the question becomes, if you saw a book priced at .99c and it had (lets just say) the best book cover ever, and it matched your preferred genre,
> would you hesitate to buy it because it has a .99c price tag?
> 
> Or do the reviews matter more to you in that instance?


I would hope that reviews matter, especially by bloggers with no connection to the author. But even with many excellent reviews, it's hard to break from the pack. It seems that the books that rocket to the top of Amazon's list and therefore start to receive internal promotion via Amazon recommendations, are those that are free. To many shoppers, even $.99 seems too expensive with the plethora of freebies to choose from.


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## Richard Parks (Feb 29, 2012)

There's nothing wrong with pricing a book low as a loss leader to encourage readers to give an unfamiliar writer's work a try, but a little of that goes a long way, imo.  And as a reader, I don't necessarily buy one book because it's $.99 and the other I'm considering is $2.99 or higher. It depends on which one looks the most interesting to me. A $.99 book can still look like a waste of money, and a higher priced book appear to be a stone cold bargain.


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