# Great Post on The Race to the Bottom in Ebook Prices



## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

http://ireaderreview.com/2011/02/19/what-happens-if-ebook-prices-drop-to-the-1-to-5-range/



> 1. Percentage of books at or below $5 out of the Top 100: 5% in 2008, 22% in 2010, 48% in 2011.
> 2. Percentage of books at $1 out of the Top 100: 0% in 2008, 4% in 2010, 21% in 2011.
> 
> The best way to put it would be -
> ...


Check out the article for some other interesting thoughts, including some speculation about positive changes that could come from cheaper ebook prices.

For the record, I think the race to $1 is a bad thing for authors and in many ways a bad thing for readers, too, because it's bad for traditional publishing and because with less profit to be made by indie authors at 99 cents, less time and energy will go into the production of indie books, as well.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Now this is a race I can win!


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Eric C said:


> Now this is a race I can win!


That's the spirit! LOL


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## Brenda Carroll (May 21, 2009)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> http://ireaderreview.com/2011/02/19/what-happens-if-ebook-prices-drop-to-the-1-to-5-range/
> 
> Check out the article for some other interesting thoughts, including some speculation about positive changes that could come from cheaper ebook prices.
> 
> For the record, I think the race to $1 is a bad thing for authors and in many ways a bad thing for readers, too, because it's bad for traditional publishing and because with less profit to be made by indie authors at 99 cents, less time and energy will go into the production of indie books, as well.


I agree with your thoughts on this subject, Moses and I have only one book listed for $.99. I feel that the question of pricing is yet to be decided and we are in for a lot more debate before it is. Unless the author is selling tens of thousands of books at $.99, there is such a discrepancy in the royalty payments between 35% and 70%, it does make writing a bit less fun to think that a lot of hard work is producing such a meager income. Of course, I will never stop writing because it is what I do. But I wonder...


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

In all seriousness, this is a good analysis, one that convinces me the horse has left the barn in regard to the direction ebook pricing has taken and will take into the future. That is, assuming price supports of some form don't emerge, price fixing via the unionization of indie authors, for example, or Amazon price decrees.

It might be useful to bear in mind that, without knowing the price elasticity of demand for any particular book, it's entirely possible to make more money at 99 cents (or at $0 with ad revenue instead) than at $2.99 or higher.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Interesting article.

I think the author missed the point in the closing statement:



> It's not the eReader or the eBook that is the pivotal change here. The biggest change is that there is now tremendous competition due to anyone being able to publish, and due to anyone being able to sell their books for any price they like. The drop in the price of books is the real revolution. It is the free market, the authors and indie authors making the most of the opportunity, and readers encouraging indie authors and published authors to go direct to readers that are the Gutenberg's Press of the 21st century.


It is, in fact, the ebook and it's connection to a digital delivery system that is the biggest change. Without that change, without the ability to actually deliver into an extant market, it would be impossible for the drop in price to occur. It's the reality that the incremental production AND delivery cost approaches zero which means selling a book for a buck will actually still net $.33 for the author.

If the pipeline was still controlled at the wholesale or even retail level, then none of this would be possible. The reality that some of us are able to get beyond that barrier and produce adequate revenues is not a driver for this revolution, but rather a by-product.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

I don't think he missed the point, Nathan. I'm sure he'd agree the technological advancement was required in order for the pricing changes to happen. He's saying the results of the new technology are more significant than the technology itself.


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

Brendan Carroll said:


> Unless the author is selling tens of thousands of books at $.99, there is such a discrepancy in the royalty payments between 35% and 70%, it does make writing a bit less fun to think that a lot of hard work is producing such a meager income. Of course, I will never stop writing because it is what I do. But I wonder...


Yep, this is where my thoughts are, as well. Everyone's eyes are dazzled by the thought of selling tens of thousands of books, because even at $.35 a pop, that's a good income. Unfortunately, you probably have to be in the top hundred or so to consistently sell that many copies every month (or else have a slew of books at lower rankings). Do the math. In the current market, that means only a few hundred people have the opportunity to make a living as writers with those low prices. It's not really all that different from how it was with print books. More people are getting a shot and having their books read, which is great, but still very few will make it to full-time, self-supporting writer this way.

--Maria


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## Paul Clayton (Sep 12, 2009)

Yes, a race to the bottom.  You're seeing more and more 99 cent titles from the big houses, usually the first in a writer's series.  The dinosaurs may be slow, but when they start moving, watch out!  Tons of backlist are being digitized and uploaded so the mosh pit is gonna get really crowded.  As a writer that gives me pause.  As a reader however, I buy books that seem interesting to me, not ones that are inexpensive.  Although, over seven or eight dollars might cause me to move on.  I think this is the big shakeout period we're in, like the beginning of the computer era when there were so many choices and systems.  But over time the market decides.  I think that for the amount of time and effort and care a writer puts into a book, 2.99 just barely covers it.  However, with the economy in the gutter, this may not be the time to raise prices.


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## rsullivan9597 (Nov 18, 2009)

I've been pretty vocal about the "race to the bottom" being bad for authors as a whole. The number of books to sell to make a "decent wage" is just too high. Funny that this article just came out today as I just blogged on my analysis of the top 100 - and I noted how high the "low price" books are intruding on this.

What is even more disturbing than indies offering books at $0.99 is that 3 traditional publishers also have books at $0.99. I'm sure this is a limited promotion but still - if all ebooks are $0.99 then atuhors will not be able to make decent salaries - IMHO.

If you want to read about my analysis of this low-price trend. You can find it here.


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## N. Gemini Sasson (Jul 5, 2010)

Thanks for the link, Moses.  The trends are astounding.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

The market should eventually reach equilibrium at a price that pays authors enough to continue to draw new work into the market.

If 99 cents makes enough people enough money that work continues to be produced, than 99 cents will be that price.  If not, it will be some other price.


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> The market should eventually reach equilibrium at a price that pays authors enough to continue to draw new work into the market.
> 
> If 99 cents makes enough people enough money that work continues to be produced, than 99 cents will be that price. If not, it will be some other price.


The market forces are not in full swing here, however. They are being controlled by Amazon. If Amazon did not set $.99 as the bottom, I have no doubt it would go lower, to virtual zero. As someone pointed out above, the marginal cost to produce a unit is close to zero (only the transaction costs and Amazon's infrastructure costs make it anything above that), so that is where the price would naturally tend to equilibrate. There will always be another author willing to volunteer his writing time on the chance that he becomes one of the annointed Top 100, so even that input can be costed to zero.

Sorry, that's a rather depressing outlook for all of us. I hope someone can give me a more positive perspective to cheer up my Sunday...

--Maria


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## Jennybeanses (Jan 27, 2011)

I only temporarily lowered my price to $.99 as a promotion to try and draw in more readers, but I'm torn on how soon to raise it back up to $2.99.

Either way, thanks for sharing that post, Moses.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

It may be time to get creative. I'm planning on selling all my novels, novellas and short stories for 99 cents, but then making up compilations of five items and aselling them for $2.99. I've begun the process in non-fiction and have two different compilations. One of six 99 cent books for $2.99 (Understanding Western Philosophy Volume I) and one of three $2.99 books and a 99 cent book for $4.99 (The Complete Deliberative Democracy). So far, it's going well but sales of the $4.99 compilation dried up after I changed the title   

Of course, it will only work for those who are prolific in their output.


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## David Wisehart (Mar 2, 2010)

There will always be a range in prices. $10-15 for an ebook is clearly unsustainable. $9.99 will soon drop away, except perhaps for multivolume works.

I see stability in the $0.99-$4.99 range. Most new authors will try to find an audience at $0.99. Writers with an established fan base can safely charge a bit higher, up to $4.99.

Of course, it will become increasingly difficult to break in at $4.99 or even $2.99. But it's always been difficult to break in. These are golden days for new writers, and that won't last forever.

If the next J.K. Rowling publishes her first book at $.99 and finds legions of fans, those fans will pay $4.99 for the sequels, even if most unknown authors are selling books for under a buck.

George R.R. Martin could charge $20 for the ebook of A Dance with Dragons, and I'd happily pay it.

The only thing we really need to worry about is creating a fan base.

That can be done at $0.99.

David


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

The percentages are interesting, but it's difficult to do much with them lacking total unit sales in each price category. Those percentages could be present in a market where eBooks at $12 are thriving, and also in amarket where they are failing. We don't know because we lack the data.

[The following example utilizes ceteris paribus which holds all variables constant except one so we can consider its effects. Ceteris paribus is not the real world. It's for modeling and gaining understanding. So, yes, I know other things change.]

Suppose we have a market with 100 books. Each sells for $10. Each book sells one copy. Total revenue is $1,000. Unit sales are 100.

The only thing that changes is the introduction of a thousand books at $1. Now the market has 1,100 books. 100 at $10, and 1,000 at $1.

Each of the 1,100 books sells one copy.

Revenue for $10 books is $1,000. Unit sales are 100. Revenue for the $1 books is $1,000. Unit sales are 1,000.

Now, $1 books represent 91% of the units sold. But sales revenue and units sold for the $10 books is unchanged. Is this a race to the bottom?

We can make up all kinds of other examples that show anything we want using the percentages given. Unless we know total units or total revenue by category, we can't do much with the info. But we should note it, because we don't know when we might stumble on new data that will combine to be very helpful.


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## Jon Olson (Dec 10, 2010)

Eric C said:


> I don't think he missed the point, Nathan. I'm sure he'd agree the technological advancement was required in order for the pricing changes to happen. He's saying the results of the new technology are more significant than the technology itself.


They are two sides of the same coin. Without one, then not the other. It takes both, and both are equally important.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

meromana said:


> The market forces are not in full swing here, however. They are being controlled by Amazon. If Amazon did not set $.99 as the bottom, I have no doubt it would go lower, to virtual zero.


That is an excellent point. There are thousands of writers out there perfectly willing to give their work away for free, and indefinitely. Luckily, Amazon doesn't let them do it on their site.

Unless I could see a reason for a book being priced as $0.99, I always assumed it was of a low quality. If it was a loss-leader on a series, a sale price, etc... I would give it a shot. Otherwise, I assumed that it probably wasn't very good. There must be other readers out there who think the same. Hopefully that will sustain a middle ground, allowing room for bargain pricers on up. I don't know, though.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Thank the flying spaghetti monster Amazon doesn't let indies give it away for free.


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## WizardofWestmarch (Jan 12, 2011)

In my mind there are likely two outcomes to the race to the bottom.

1) It equalizes out at a saner price point (at LEAST 2.99 where the author gets 70%, but possibly even higher than that) and it is somewhat possible after an author has released enough books to start making a living that way (I'd guess you would probably need at least 5 books at 2.99 [at that setup, selling an average of 15 copies of each book a day gets you almost 4.6k/month income before all the taxes/health insurance/etc]). Lots of buildup time during which you'd have to keep a day job, but if you save/invest smartly the early income until you get that 5th book out, that gives you a heads up in case hiccups occur.

2) Shorter works become more common to minimize the time per income, though in this case either authors would have to spend less on a cover or perhaps even more would have to start doing them themselves (in the cases of the people spending several hundred dollars per cover anyway), though the per work editing costs for those who pay for professional editing would also go down due to the works being shorter.

Neither of these would surprise me, since either the market gets saner, or authors react to ensure their time to market compared to income allows a decent living wage.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Terrence is correct -- the "race to the bottom" is partly a race for a different audience.  

Again, books are not commodities.  I usually say this in the context of different prices for different books -- but I have a different point this time:

Someone further upthread pointed out how so many indies have stars in their eyes over "unlimited" possibilities of sales.  I gotta say this -- the possibilities are NOT unlimited, they are merely unknown.  There are a limited number of people who will be interested in any particular book.  Those who are not interested will never be interested at any price. Those who are interested may be affected by price, but there is still a limit as to how many customers you will ever have.

Unknown does NOT equal unlimited.

Camille


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## jhendereson (Oct 22, 2010)

Daringnovelist, you're right. What your audience is willing to pay is a major factor in this equation. Take a look at the top 100 in African American fiction. Eliminate the misplaced titles by James Patterson and you will find a few titles priced over $3. Certain audiences, I think, will not, and never will, pay the higher prices for ebooks. Personally, I have no problem with my novels set at .99, though my wife and agent rail that I'm selling myself short. I don't dream of getting rich selling novels, nor do I view my work as a business endeavor. Hell, if Amazon would allow me I'd give Baby Huey away free of charge. Yet I do respect that other writers have different goals and objectives.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Shorter works become more common to minimize the time per income, though in this case either authors would have to spend less on a cover or perhaps even more would have to start doing them themselves (in the cases of the people spending several hundred dollars per cover anyway), though the per work editing costs for those who pay for professional editing would also go down due to the works being shorter."_

Amazon and the Wylie Agency had a deal last summer to bring ther backlists of famous authors to the Kindle bypassing the print publishers. Lots of stuff happened, but one of the interesting things that happened was the lack of covers for these works. For example, they brought Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man _ out with a cover image that simply printed the title and author. No pictures, art, etc. There were about twenty titles, and all were well known, but none was given what anyone would consider a cover.


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## rsullivan9597 (Nov 18, 2009)

tbrookside said:


> The market should eventually reach equilibrium at a price that pays authors enough to continue to draw new work into the market.
> 
> If 99 cents makes enough people enough money that work continues to be produced, than 99 cents will be that price. If not, it will be some other price.


I don't agree - it is not the market that is setting the $0.99 price it is authors "thinking" that they only way to get an audience is to set at $0.99. This works for some peope - For instance the 18 people who hit the top 100. But for the thousands of other authors who have raced to $0.99 all it is resulting in is a few pennys in their pockets.

I also still contend that most of the $0.99 books are never read - I have quite a few on my kindle that I probably will never get to. Impulse buying does not a new fan make.


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## Shelia A. Huggins (Jan 20, 2011)

jhendereson said:


> Daringnovelist, you're right. What your audience is willing to pay is a major factor in this equation. Take a look at the top 100 in African American fiction. Eliminate the misplaced titles by James Patterson and you will find a few titles priced over $3. Certain audiences, I think, will not, and never will, pay the higher prices for ebooks. Personally, I have no problem with my novels set at .99, though my wife and agent rail that I'm selling myself short. I don't dream of getting rich selling novels, nor do I view my work as a business endeavor. Hell, if Amazon would allow me I'd give Baby Huey away free of charge. Yet I do respect that other writers have different goals and objectives.


Jhenderson,
You make an interesting point. I hadn't looked at the African-American fiction list. Who are you thinking those audiences are? BTW...my novel is priced at 0.99.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Everything we are observing is the result of the gatekeepers opening the gates. Is there reason to think Amazon maximizes profit under the current system? Perhaps a minimum price of $2 maxes their profit. Or $5. Or $7. We don't know. Is there any reason to think Amazon will continue as they have? They are learning quite a bit they are nopt sharing with us.

The gatekeepers are not gone. They are just leaving the gates open. They can adjust it at any time.


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## WizardofWestmarch (Jan 12, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> _"Shorter works become more common to minimize the time per income, though in this case either authors would have to spend less on a cover or perhaps even more would have to start doing them themselves (in the cases of the people spending several hundred dollars per cover anyway), though the per work editing costs for those who pay for professional editing would also go down due to the works being shorter."_
> 
> Amazon and the Wylie Agency had a deal last summer to bring ther backlists of famous authors to the Kindle bypassing the print publishers. Lots of stuff happened, but one of the interesting things that happened was the lack of covers for these works. For example, they brought Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man _ out with a cover image that simply printed the title and author. No pictures, art, etc. There were about twenty titles, and all were well known, but none was given what anyone would consider a cover.


I knew about the Wylie agency deal, but had not heard about the lack of covers, that's interesting. Though most/all of those were better known works I seem to recall, so I'm not sure if the same thing would work for a new and unknown.

Still, a very interesting data point.


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## R. Doug (Aug 14, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> For the record, I think the race to $1 is a bad thing for authors and in many ways a bad thing for readers, too, because it's bad for traditional publishing and because with less profit to be made by indie authors at 99 cents, less time and energy will go into the production of indie books, as well.


100% agree. It's the "Walmartization" of eBooks, and that's _never_ good for anybody in the long run.


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## jhendereson (Oct 22, 2010)

Ms Huggins, the majority of the African American audience is African American women. By the way, I read your book description and it sounds pretty interesting. Best of luck.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

tbrookside said:


> The market should eventually reach equilibrium at a price that pays authors enough to continue to draw new work into the market.
> 
> If 99 cents makes enough people enough money that work continues to be produced, than 99 cents will be that price. If not, it will be some other price.


TBrook, I think you're on the right track (as usual) but there are a lot of players that aren't going to be dictated to by the traditional market system. Many writers operate outside this system, in that they have no aspirations of making a go of it as a full-time writer. All they care about are sales and some pocket change. For them there's very little upward pressure on price...


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## WizardofWestmarch (Jan 12, 2011)

daveconifer said:


> TBrook, I think you're on the right track (as usual) but there are a lot of players that aren't going to be dictated to by the traditional market system. Many writers operate outside this system, in that they have no aspirations of making a go of it as a full-time writer. All they care about are sales and some pocket change. For them there's very little upward pressure on price...


True, but people who do it on the side, unless retired, will have less time to write and so unless a significant number more OF them write and do so at a level people find acceptable, someone will have to fill the gap to create enough new content for people to read.


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## rsullivan9597 (Nov 18, 2009)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Everything we are observing is the result of the gatekeepers opening the gates. Is there reason to think Amazon maximizes profit under the current system? Perhaps a minimum price of $2 maxes their profit. Or $5. Or $7. We don't know. Is there any reason to think Amazon will continue as they have? They are learning quite a bit they are nopt sharing with us.
> 
> The gatekeepers are not gone. They are just leaving the gates open. They can adjust it at any time.


Good point Terrence - in fact the gatekeepers are not gone - they are by definition our distribution partners (namely Amazon and B&N) just because many aren't using publishers doesn't mean they are selling direct - the only true "direct selling" is from your website or in person.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

This is funny. Here's a comment a customer just left on the Amazon Kindle Facebook page:

"these 0.99 and free books make me think that a book that costs 9.99 is a little expensive! lol"


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## Jack Wallen (Feb 9, 2011)

Nathan Lowell said:


> Interesting article.
> 
> I think the author missed the point in the closing statement:
> 
> ...


You are very correct here. Ebooks have been around quite a bit longer than the ereaders have. Because so few wanted to read on the PCs, ebooks simply didn't take off. It wasn't until the Kindle was released that the ebook market began to sore. And had it not been for that, we wouldn't all be here enjoying whatever success it is we are all enjoying.


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## rsullivan9597 (Nov 18, 2009)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> This is funny. Here's a comment a customer just left on the Amazon Kindle Facebook page:
> 
> "these 0.99 and free books make me think that a book that costs 9.99 is a little expensive! lol"


Notice they said $9.99 is too expensive but not $4.95 - I still think readers don't mind paying less than $5 for an ebook.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

rsullivan9597 said:


> I also still contend that most of the $0.99 books are never read


It could be true that people don't read .99 books -- there's no way to know either way, although many people seem to have forceful guesses on the topic.



rsullivan9597 said:


> Impulse buying does not a new fan make.


But who says that impulse buys are the only purchases of .99 books?


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

rsullivan9597 said:


> I also still contend that most of the $0.99 books are never read - I have quite a few on my kindle that I probably will never get to. Impulse buying does not a new fan make.


On the flip side, most people report that they sell a lot more books at 99 cents. Even if only half of those are read, cheap prices are probably the best way to reach the most readers--_if that's your top goal_. That's especially true if a low price helps your book take off.

I think 99 cents has its place. Heck, I would pay good money just to give my novella away for free on Amazon since it's partly a commercial for my novel.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

rsullivan9597 said:


> Notice they said $9.99 is too expensive but not $4.95 - I still think readers don't mind paying less than $5 for an ebook.


What I loved about her comment is that she was laughing even at the idea that $9.99 is a little expensive. The average reader hasn't been conditioned to low indie prices yet. Once most people are ... yikes.


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## daveconifer (Oct 20, 2009)

WizardofWestmarch said:


> True, but people who do it on the side, unless retired, will have less time to write and so unless a significant number more OF them write and do so at a level people find acceptable, someone will have to fill the gap to create enough new content for people to read.


I'm not trying to paint this group as a dominant force, but we're not just talking about a few retired spinsters. There are a lot more people in this category than I think you're allowing for...


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

rsullivan9597 said:


> Good point Terrence - in fact the gatekeepers are not gone - they are by definition our distribution partners (namely Amazon and B&N) just because many aren't using publishers doesn't mean they are selling direct - the only true "direct selling" is from your website or in person.


Sort of...

The thing is, right now, people are mainly getting their books from the major retail sites. But part of that is because it's easy. It's easy partly because people are not that familiar with ebooks, and the one click factor is especially important.

Even though the one-click convenience of just sending a book to your e-reader from the retailer is always going to be important, the big BARRIER to other retailers is that people aren't used to them. The real retailers in this new world are the bloggers, and Facebook and Twitter and other social networking sites. And people are used to buying from links on their trusted sites. (For instance, I don't buy Kazoos from Amazon, because I buy from Kazoos.com.)

There are people who make a good living selling ebooks on eBay.

It just depends on how you market. Amazon makes it very very easy to market, so yes, we all prefer it.... but if Amazon decided to become a gatekeeper, we'd all still have options.

But frankly I don't expect that, because Amazon doesn't see us as vendors. They see us as customers. We are a big revenue source, just as the Amazon Associates are. (Associates are very loyal customers.) This is the Web 2.0 of retailing.

And if Amazon closes the gates, then Google will open them.

Camille


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

I suppose this is far more negative than people want to hear, but unless the perception or the reality that very cheap ebooks are of inferior quality keeps hold, I don't see how the race to the bottom stops.  And if people like hundreds on this list and others keep producing good quality books for cheap, that perception will (and should IMO) change.  There are two questions I ask, and the answers tell me that prices will keep getting cheaper:

1.What is the average income per printed book that traditionally published authors have made the last decade or so? Across the board, all authors, PB and hardback. Let's even just restrict this discussion to fiction. That number is somewhere between $1 and $3 from everything I've heard.  So  if authors can't make a living at $2.99 ebooks, then they can't make a living now.  Which leads to #2

2.What percentage of traditionally published fiction authors over the past decade have made the majority of their income from it? It's a small fraction.  so they could sell for 99 cents and probably not be that much worse off. What about the 5-10 years on average it takes an author to get their break in traditional publishing?  During that time, the author is essentially working for free.  They're no worse off giving the book away for free - they're better off because they're building an audience.


Given these facts, I don't see anything short of the re-instituting of gatekeepers changing the reality of $1-$3 or even less becoming the price.  Yes, Amazon might change things, but I'm not even sure they can get the horse back in the barn, nor do I think they particularly want to.  They're the bookie, they make plenty off the vig.

Is this bad for authors?  Well, no worse than the traditional model.  This is more "democratic", with both the pros and cons that always entails. BUt regardless of whether it is good or bad, it's the reality.  Now, if you don't come to the same conclusions as I do when I look at the facts, that's certainly valid - I could be totally misinterpreting it. But if you do agree that's where we're headed, then best to work with that expected reality.


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## Music &amp; Mayhem (Jun 15, 2010)

daveconifer said:


> It could be true that people don't read .99 books -- there's no way to know either way, although many people seem to have forceful guesses on the topic. But who says that impulse buys are the only purchases of .99 books?


I just bought a Joe Konrath novel for .99 and I'm reading it. It's not Lee Child, but it ain't bad. And don't forget you can download a sample to see if the writing is acceptable. Don't like it? don't buy it.


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## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Nathan Lowell said:


> Interesting article.
> 
> I think the author missed the point in the closing statement:
> 
> ...


Since I first got on board of the e-book thing I have seen this as a market shift. No longer do we have the intermediaries making a living from the relationship between a writer and a reader. Now the reader calls the shots and the author is their friend. Everyone else in the supply chain has become irrelevant or secondary for the first time ever.



edwardgtalbot said:


> I suppose this is far more negative than people want to hear, but unless the perception or the reality that very cheap ebooks are of inferior quality keeps hold, I don't see how the race to the bottom stops. And if people like hundreds on this list and others keep producing good quality books for cheap, that perception will (and should IMO) change. There are two questions I ask, and the answers tell me that prices will keep getting cheaper:
> 
> 1.What is the average income per printed book that traditionally published authors have made the last decade or so? Across the board, all authors, PB and hardback. Let's even just restrict this discussion to fiction. That number is somewhere between $1 and $3 from everything I've heard. So if authors can't make a living at $2.99 ebooks, then they can't make a living now. Which leads to #2
> 
> ...


Yep. The authors are no worse off, it is the others in the supply chain that are suddenly missing out. Publishers can no longer expect a royalty or commission, they have to acknowledge that they will work for a flat rate. Ditto for editors, designers, layouts, etc.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Everyone else in the supply chain has become irrelevant or secondary for the first time ever."_

Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Sony seem relevant.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

edwardgtalbot said:


> 1.What is the average income per printed book that traditionally published authors have made the last decade or so? Across the board, all authors, PB and hardback. Let's even just restrict this discussion to fiction. That number is somewhere between $1 and $3 from everything I've heard. So if authors can't make a living at $2.99 ebooks, then they can't make a living now. Which leads to #2


Except that so far consumer behavior shows two things: readers appear to be buying a lot more ebooks than they did paper books (perhaps because the price is lower), and the advent of sub $5 prices is bringing the used book crowd back into the fold. So the audience is bigger and buys more. More money in the pot, and a much higher proportion goes into the pocket of the writers.



> 2.What percentage of traditionally published fiction authors over the past decade have made the majority of their income from it? It's a small fraction. so they could sell for 99 cents and probably not be that much worse off. What about the 5-10 years on average it takes an author to get their break in traditional publishing? During that time, the author is essentially working for free. They're no worse off giving the book away for free - they're better off because they're building an audience.


This is an apples and oranges argument. To understand why, you have to go back to the time when midlist books stayed in print -- and in those days the majority of authors did make a very good living. The thing that is killing traditionally published authors in the past few decades was the power that got put into the hands of the book distributors after the Thor Power Tools ruling made it impossible for publishers to print the kinds of enormous print runs they used to.

Back in the old days, a writer had a long long career, because there was no question that the first book would go out of print before the author had written and published quite a few more. Once the distributors took control, however, the goal was no longer to nurture a career. B&Ns automated system was unforgiving. They'd order a decent number of new authors' first books, but they would never order more of the second than the first actually sold - which meant the second got a narrower distribution. Then the third book was automatically narrower yet. If the first three books didn't make it to the best seller list, the fourth book didn't get bought at all, even if it had buzz. Back in the nineties, publishers started fighting this by having authors change their names every three books or so.

For nearly four decades, publishing has become strange and warped, based largely on pleasing the large chain booksellers and distributor's needs, but not based at all on the needs of consumers or publishers/writers. You can't base predictions on data from that model.

(And note, the one exception to that model in the past 10 years has been Amazon -- the one retailer with endless bookshelves and a goal to have every book - in print and OUT of print - a retailer which has been studying consumer needs and habits since the beginning. IMHO, if we take a cue from anyone, it should be Amazon.)

IMHO, the prices will continue to become cheaper...among inexperienced writers. Which means the prejudice about quality will continue as people put up cheap books with awkward covers and blurbs, etc.

Camille


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

I disagree. I agree. I have no thoughts on the matter. I have two dozen opinions on it. I think without a good pricing thread, the day wouldn't be complete - just like that coffee break or that run to the bottom.   I think I should price my books at what they are worth, only no could afford them.   Or just give them away like the Gideon Bible. I'm am artist. I'm a machine. I'm a gadfly. I'm a dream. We need to talk and tell, tell and talk, but nobody silently walks the walk. When you dance with the dolly with the hole in the stocking, you can step on her toes without pain. How insane. I agree. I disagree. Flush! Run to the bottom.

Edward C. PatterPatterPatterItReallyDoesn'tMatterson


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

daringnovelist said:


> IMHO, the prices will continue to become cheaper...among inexperienced writers. Which means the prejudice about quality will continue as people put up cheap books with awkward covers and blurbs, etc.


That sounds right. I know that if I ever get to a point where I'm experienced enough to have a decent number of people who want to read my work, I'm not going to be pricing at 99 cents, and probably not at $2.99 either. For now, I probably will use those prices (though I'm still considering $3.99).


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Terrence OBrien said:


> _"Everyone else in the supply chain has become irrelevant or secondary for the first time ever."_
> 
> Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Sony seem relevant.


True dat.


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## peter darbyshire (Jan 22, 2011)

I wonder how much of a role genre plays in pricing. Just reading different posts on pricing, I've noted people talking about price points that work and don't work for them, and it seems to play out differently in different genres. Romance readers seem to like the lower price points but make up for it in volume, mystery readers seem willing to pay in the $2.99-$4.99 range, but not much more, sci-fi seems to be in the 99 cents to $4.99 range. I suppose it's like that with print too, but the range of prices with print is less varied. 

I can't say I've ever bought a book just because it's 99 cents. I use the preview to make my decision, not the purchase price. But I don't think twice about "traditional" prices -- I'm reading a book I bought for 12.99 right now, by a lesser-known debut writer. Sure, it's more than other books, but not enough to stop me if I want to read it. Not like hardcover pricing (he says as his hardcover is still in the stores....).


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## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Terrence OBrien said:


> _"Everyone else in the supply chain has become irrelevant or secondary for the first time ever."_
> 
> Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Sony seem relevant.


Yes and no. You make a good point, I did gloss over their importance in the supply chain, because they are largely facilitators now rather than a publisher or traditional store (stores having a much higher markup need and overheads).

With direct access to authors available the public can choose not to interact through those intermediaries. If you or I release a book we need to have an audience, a market place can give us access to that. I don't think we can eliminate a market place so Amazon, B&N, etc have a place, but they may or may not be the future of that market. With new e-readers coming along though, this field will suddenly matter less. Amazon has a good share going now, but it would be very easy for a unaffiliated reader to hit the market and mean that you can download books from any site. If you are Dan Brown you could actually place copies of your book for sale on your own page and sell them directly.


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## Carolyn Kephart (Feb 23, 2009)

daringnovelist said:


> IMHO, the prices will continue to become cheaper...among inexperienced writers. Which means the prejudice about quality will continue as people put up cheap books with awkward covers and blurbs, etc.
> 
> Camille


Terrific post, Camille, which I was sorry to snip, but the quoted words are something I've taken to heart of late. My work is professionally competitive, and I've decided it's time to price it that way. From now on it's $5.95 and up for novels, although short fiction will stay 99 cents a yarn (except on Smashwords, where those who take the trouble to find it can get it free ).

CK


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

I think one book priced low (99 cents) and then the rest from that author or brand at higher prices will become the norm.  ($2.99 to $4.99)  I believe we'll see the books priced higher than $4.99 go away, even with the traditionally published books.  Just my gut feeling.

We've seen that people will buy ebooks at higher prices.  However, we are seeing the lower prices making their way up the rank ladder, which shows that readers do care about price.

Anything above $4.99 for an ebook is too expensive, IMHO.  I wouldn't pay for it.  And remember, even though we can save our ebooks and read them later, it feels more like a throw away purchase because technology changes so fast.  Are we really going to be using MOBI format in ten years?  I'm guessing no.  Buying an ebook isn't as permanent as buying a hard copy.

Vicki


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## *DrDLN* (dr.s.dhillon) (Jan 19, 2011)

I would rather sell 100 at $4.99 than 1000 at 99 cents.  Because to sell 100 for a reasonably good book is much easier.  The bottom line is royalty which will come out to be about the same.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Victorine said:


> Anything above $4.99 for an ebook is too expensive, IMHO. I wouldn't pay for it. And remember, even though we can save our ebooks and read them later, it feels more like a throw away purchase because technology changes so fast. Are we really going to be using MOBI format in ten years? I'm guessing no. Buying an ebook isn't as permanent as buying a hard copy.


And then I'm someone who feels that ebooks are far superior products to paper books. I'd pay more for an ebook than I would for any paper book. If it's a book I really want, then $10 or even $15 would be no big deal. And I'd much rather have the ebook than a hardcover. Ebooks have so many superior features IMO.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

peter darbyshire said:


> I wonder how much of a role genre plays in pricing. Just reading different posts on pricing, I've noted people talking about price points that work and don't work for them, and it seems to play out differently in different genres. Romance readers seem to like the lower price points but make up for it in volume, mystery readers seem willing to pay in the $2.99-$4.99 range, but not much more, sci-fi seems to be in the 99 cents to $4.99 range. I suppose it's like that with print too, but the range of prices with print is less varied.
> 
> I can't say I've ever bought a book just because it's 99 cents. I use the preview to make my decision, not the purchase price. But I don't think twice about "traditional" prices -- I'm reading a book I bought for 12.99 right now, by a lesser-known debut writer. Sure, it's more than other books, but not enough to stop me if I want to read it. Not like hardcover pricing (he says as his hardcover is still in the stores....).


I think we don't have enough data yet to be too confident in this idea, but it's certainly intriguing.

You make a good point about price not being the reason you buy. The Amazon site has so many different ways of recommending books, that I have to wonder how many different ways people actually use. *My* process is to start with authors I like and see if they have anything new. Then look at the "Also Bought" ribbon under their names. And then look at "Amazon's Recommendations" for me. And only after I've exhausted those will I look at the genre lists.

When making a decision about whether or not to buy a book along that trail, price matters *only* if it's over $5. I'll grab an author I like if it's $8 and it's published by a Major so I know the author has no control over the price. I tend to avoid the 99 cent titles and look in the 2.99 to 4.99 range. That's my "disposable income trigger zone" and I very rarely go outside it.

The key elements for me are (in order)

Cover - if the cover is a mess, I never click on the thumbnail. 
Blurb - if the blurb tells me how great the book is without telling me what it's about, it's done. 
Number and distribution of reviews - I like to see a collection of reviews. Three five-star reviews doesn't cut much ice with me. More 1's than 5's? Same. 
Length - I don't read short. Not novellas, not short stories, not anthologies. I read novels. If there's a paper version, I'll look at page count. Under two hundred pages is a non starter. No paper version? Hmmm. 

All these are parts of my decision to sample or not. No sample, no buy. If I like the sample, I usually buy. FWIW, if I get to the "Buy it" link at the end of the sample, I'll generally buy the book. I throw a LOT of books before I get halfway through the sample.


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## FictionalWriter (Aug 4, 2010)

If I want a book and like the sound of book, I'll buy it at pretty much any price below $7.99. I just bought Bella Andre's GAME FOR LOVE and she has it at $5.99. I'm an avid romance reader and paying $5, $6 for digital books is pretty normal.



Victorine said:


> I think one book priced low (99 cents) and then the rest from that author or brand at higher prices will become the norm. ($2.99 to $4.99) I believe we'll see the books priced higher than $4.99 go away, even with the traditionally published books. Just my gut feeling.
> 
> We've seen that people will buy ebooks at higher prices. However, we are seeing the lower prices making their way up the rank ladder, which shows that readers do care about price.
> 
> ...


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

LauraB said:


> Your view isn't entirely accurate either. I've owned ereaders since the rocket book in the early 90's (I also owned ebookman and read off my palm.) The vast majority of ebooks were $2-3 more than the print prices all the way up until Amazon allowed self publishing. That is when the lower prices of came to play, at least for the reader to see and buy. Dedicated ereaders were in my home for 14 years before I was able to purchase "self published" (and so self priced) books.


That's a very good point and I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days.

I was talking it over with a colleague and she suggested that the revolution is not about the price, the technology, or who's selling. Her take was that the real revolution is in the reader -- not the device but the person. She suggested that -taken as a whole - the convergence of technological change, social factors, and economic constraints has taken what was once a very broad definition of "niche" as represented by genre and modified it to become "a market of one" -- a kind of "genre of me."

It's no longer a question of selling into a single market, one genre (if it ever has been), but rather the idea that 
(1) the technology allows us to reach the individual, 
(2) society has gotten to the point where it's not only accepted but actually encouraged, and 
(3) the economic factors of overhead, production, and distribution make it financially viable.

The revolution is not in any of these ideas by themselves, but actually on the other side of the equation in the person who is buying those books in this format using these tools.

She's a lot smarter than I am. I'm surprised she talks to me, sometimes.

Now is that the point the author was making with "The drop in the price of books is the real revolution"...?

I don't know. It still feels more like a result than a revolution - a logical artifact of a deeper social dynamic and not the game changer by itself. I'm not sure *why* it feels like that but there it is.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Camille -

Good points a few posts back in response to my observations.  I don't disagree with what you've said and we both come to the same conclusion - ebooks will continue to get cheaper.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Here's how I think it’ll go:

Imagine being Jonny New Kindle owner...

Let's say Jonny eagerly downloads a lot of 99 cent books, not believing his luck at finding such inexpensive reads on his shiny new Kindle. As it's so cheap, he didn't feel the need to download the sample first... after all 99 cents isn't much risk is it? 

And Jonny reads his first 99 cent book.

It's pretty bad to be honest. Full of spelling mistakes and typos. The story is ok and he wades to the end, coming away thinkign it probably was worth the 99 cent asking price.

The next book is dreadful. Horrible, story, loads of typos. He can't get through the first ten pages... Maybe this 99 cent thing ain't such a good idea after all...

But the third book is a real find. Brilliantly executed, funny, well written, and surely worth far more than the 99 cent asking price, right?

The fourth book is average.

The fifth is awful.

As is the sixth.

Jonny never gets to number seven, as while he found one good book, the rest weren’t worth even the 99 cents.

He now has the opinion that a majority of 99 cent books are terrible. And tells all his friends on the forums he frequents the same thing.

Jonny only looks at books that cost more now, and he always downloads a sample.

This attitude spreads. 99 cent is largely seen as a negative by a majority of the Kindle audience, who have now been buying books look enough to realise that finding a really good book for 99 cents is extremely hard to do.

This is how I think things will eventually settle down.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Yes, but my wife has had her Kindle for a year, Nick. She had a similar experience, except that one "find" (for her it was Undead Situation) has kept her going for the full year. She still buys 99 cent books, and downloads at least 5 free books a week, even though many of them are godawful.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> Yes, but my wife has had her Kindle for a year, Nick. She had a similar experience, except that one "find" (for her it was Undead Situation) has kept her going for the full year. She still buys 99 cent books, and downloads at least 5 free books a week, even though many of them are godawful.


Yeah, fair point Dave, it was a generalisation. I just think most readers in the long run might not have your wife's patience! I'd count myself as one of them, unfortunately. Even as an indie author I fear I'm developing an avoidance to books priced at 99 cents just because I've read so many that are - and my brain isn't functioning well enough on this dreaery Monday afternoon to put this more eloqently - a pile of six day old horse sh*t.


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

I always saw the race to 99c/free as merely being the path of least resistance for an _anticipated_ gain of market mind-share, the trouble is of course that there naturally is a limit and now a lot of us are sitting at the bottom here going "Well, that was _fun_ <sarcasm>, now how the hell do we get out of here?". Of course, it'll take some souls who are doing moderately okay at 99c to step back out and push the price up a bit more.

No doubt it'll be in constant oscillation.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

samples. 

if you buy a bad book, it's your own fault. 

I think that's the diff. 

There's also a psychological factor known as "variable ratio reinforcement" where the average level of reinforcement is stable, but on an irregular basis.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

Nathan Lowell said:


> samples.
> 
> if you buy a bad book, it's your own fault.
> 
> I think that's the diff.


When trying to predict how things will fall, you look at how things happen. Not how they should happen.

What does happen is that people buy $.99 books and often get disappointed. That will shape how people view pricing. Fault has little to do with it.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Nathan Lowell said:


> There's also a psychological factor known as "variable ratio reinforcement" where the average level of reinforcement is stable, but on an irregular basis.


Nathan, can you help us slow kids out with that one?


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## Emma Midnight (Feb 19, 2011)

tbrookside said:


> The market should eventually reach equilibrium at a price that pays authors enough to continue to draw new work into the market.
> 
> If 99 cents makes enough people enough money that work continues to be produced, than 99 cents will be that price. If not, it will be some other price.


One of the interesting byproducts of this new system of digital delivery that may not yet be accounted for is what will happen when the number of available titles increases far beyond what is available now. If Amazon has one million ebooks for sale now, in five years they may have five million for sale. How will that affect pricing? How will that affect the money writer's earn?

And unless Amazon at some point begins to purge titles, the number of ebooks for sale will continue grow year after year. Perhaps in 20 years there will be 50 million different ebook titles for sale.


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## Emma Midnight (Feb 19, 2011)

Half-Orc said:


> Yes, but my wife has had her Kindle for a year, Nick. She had a similar experience, except that one "find" (for her it was Undead Situation) has kept her going for the full year. She still buys 99 cent books, and downloads at least 5 free books a week, even though many of them are godawful.


Does she sample? Sampling may not tell if the book itself is good, but at least I can tell if the writer is competent on a sentence and paragraph level. I stay away from writers who struggle at that level.


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## DevonMark (Jan 28, 2011)

I think NickSpalding is right, in fact I hope he is. If 99c = rubbish then it will mean that 2.99 becomes a signal of quality. The 99c books will still exist like the value ranges in the supermarkets - everyone will know that they are ok, but no more than that.



Music & Mayhem said:


> I just bought a Joe Konrath novel for .99 and I'm reading it. It's not Lee Child, but it ain't bad. And don't forget you can download a sample to see if the writing is acceptable. Don't like it? don't buy it.


I read one Lee Child novel, that was enough. Maybe I will give Konrath a go


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

DevonMark said:


> I think NickSpalding is right, in fact I hope he is. If 99c = rubbish then it will mean that 2.99 becomes a signal of quality. The 99c books will still exist like the value ranges in the supermarkets - everyone will know that they are ok, but no more than that.


For me, 99 cents and $2.99 both indicate possible quality issues. Anything over $2.99 makes me take more notice and think a book might just be really good.

I have a 99 cent preview novella and I might price my first novel at $2.99, but I can't wait to get to (I hope) where I feel I can charge $3.99 or $4.99. As a new author, though, a low price is one good way to get more people to try your work.


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## Michelle Muto (Feb 1, 2011)

I always download samples now.

As for how many books are available? No problem - as long as there are better ways to filter search results to find the type of books you are looking for. Then, it'll be field day! And, at 99 cents - $5.99, I think a good book is worth every penny. That's to say that I won't hesitate to buy a book for $5.99 if I've seen the cover is professional, the sample is good, and the editing/formatting is clean. Note I didn't say perfect because I've read more and more traditionally published books lately that have LOADS of formatting and typos in them. Sad, considering I paid $12 or more on the physical book when some weren't any better than the cheaper Indie ones, or bigger name backlists.


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## Disappointed (Jul 28, 2010)

If you've collected boxes/shelves of books and moved frequently, paper books are far inferior to ebooks simply because of the physical bulk. I'm working through my book boxes as they make the trip to Half Price, and will never buy paper again if I can get it in ebook format. Similarly, my music collection is collapsing to my smartphone.

Kindle ebooks are backed up at Amazon, so I suspect that any changes in the format technology will filter out to your library. But the big advantage of an ebook is it being available to read some of it on your Kindle, then continue on a smartphone at the place you left off, then picked up at the new location on your Kindle or your PC when you get home. That portability makes the ebook reading experience a lot like carrying a paper book, except the ebook is in the cloud. I will, and did, pay MORE for that convenience than I will now for paper.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

> No paper version? Hmmm.


Nathan - when you have a moment would you mind expanding on this thought? I was very intrigued by it, as I never considered the lack of a paper edition to be a significant factor in the purchase process, particularly if you were looking for a digital work.

I'm asking because I have several of my previously published books available on the Kindle but haven't yet released print editions for any of them. I'm thinking particularly of the three books in my Templar Chronicles trilogy - The Heretic, A Scream of Angels, and A Tear in the Sky. While the English language rights have reverted to me, the books are still available in overseas editions, most notably in Germany, Russia and Poland. (There is no way to know this, of course, from Amazon.com) From your comment it sounds like the lack of a print edition might keep you from trying a book like mine. If it impacts one reader, it might impact quite a few others, and I'd want to eliminate as many barriers to purchase as possible.

-Joe


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> Nathan, can you help us slow kids out with that one?


Variable ratio reinforcement is when the payoff comes at irregular intervals. You'd THINK that people who know that the reward isn't coming on a regular basis would be less likely to participate in an activity where the payoff is key. (Like gambling or buying books.) The reverse is actually true, and if you REALLY want to encourage behavior, adopt a variable ratio or even variable schedule scheme of reinforcement. It pays psychological dividends. That's why people will continue to play the 99 cent wheel, people are predisposed psychologically to keep trying them even if they get a bunch of bad ones in a row in hopes that the *next* one will be another good one. It's the "My Luck's Gotta Change SOON" syndrome. Then you have good books like Amanda and Vicki and others who pay off for them regularly enough that they just HAVE to keep going.

There's an







that's flagged "too technical for the average reader" but it's better than most other references I could give you.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Jnassise said:


> Nathan - when you have a moment would you mind expanding on this thought? I was very intrigued by it, as I never considered the lack of a paper edition to be a significant factor in the purchase process, particularly if you were looking for a digital work.
> 
> I'm asking because I have several of my previously published books available on the Kindle but haven't yet released print editions for any of them. I'm thinking particularly of the three books in my Templar Chronicles trilogy - The Heretic, A Scream of Angels, and A Tear in the Sky. While the English language rights have reverted to me, the books are still available in overseas editions, most notably in Germany, Russia and Poland. (There is no way to know this, of course, from Amazon.com) From your comment it sounds like the lack of a print edition might keep you from trying a book like mine. If it impacts one reader, it might impact quite a few others, and I'd want to eliminate as many barriers to purchase as possible.
> 
> -Joe


If you have a kindle edition but don't give me a hint about whether I'm buying a novel or a short story (file size is a terrible predictor), and there's no paper version with a page count that I can check, then I'm thinking you're hiding something. That's probably unfair of me. But it's so easy to put the paper version up, why wouldn't you?

If the CreateSpace fee (I think it's up to about $80 now) is too much then at least give me a word count somewhere in the book so I have an idea.

The only reason I mention it is that I've sampled a couple of works that looked pretty good until I realized the sample ended after 145 sentences. I generally ONLY read full novels. Eighty thousand words or higher, as a rule. I read so fast that anything shorter is over just about the time I get invested in it and I *hate* that. Other people may not notice - or pay attention to the size of the work but -- particularly if I'm paying novel price (3.99 or up), then I'm wanting novel length. If you're pricing there and not telling me what I'm getting, I'm not even gonna sample to find out. There's too many other works I can grab that give me what I need to make a decision on the page.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Thanks for the more detailed explanation, Nathan.

As a fast reader myself (6 novels per week, on average) I'm surprised I never thought of that, but you are entirely correct.  I'd be ticked if I bought something I thought was a novel and it turned out to be a novella or novelette.  

The original mass market paperback for Heretic was 304 pages, but I just realized that I don't mention that one the Kindle version (and since I changed the name to The Heretic, the paperback edition isn't linked to the digital one.)

A good tip and one I'll go through and add to my book descriptions in the future.

Best,
Joe


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> Yes, but my wife has had her Kindle for a year, Nick. She had a similar experience, except that one "find" (for her it was Undead Situation) has kept her going for the full year. She still buys 99 cent books, and downloads at least 5 free books a week, even though many of them are godawful.


Does she use samples, or does she buy on the book on the blurb? 
*should have read the whole thread b4 posting redundant qu*


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

"I've owned ereaders since the rocket book in the early 90's (I also owned ebookman and read off my palm.)  The vast majority of ebooks were $2-3 more than the print prices all the way up until Amazon allowed self publishing."

I had (have, it still works) a Rocket Ebook also and loved it, but IMO the big pubs killed ebooks at that point, or at least kept them in check, with high prices and low availability. I know for me, I loved the Rocket but was very disappointed to find there wasn't much availability and what was available was overpriced. I was willing to try the more reasonably priced indie books in spite of nothing like a sample feature, but I couldn't find that many that appealed and the prices weren't attractively low either. My Rocket experience made me very reluctant to get an ereader again. I waited to get a Kindle until it had been out a while, and I saw the number of books for it steadily increasing and that the prices were reasonable (before agency pricing). In the end I decided to trust Amazon's commitment to the Kindle and have never looked back.

A low price won't lure me to buy, but a high price will stop me. One of the stats we don't have is how many avid readers have to be budget conscious.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> Does she use samples, or does she buy on the book on the blurb?
> *should have read the whole thread b4 posting redundant qu*


She never, ever samples. I'm the only one who does.


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## Emma Midnight (Feb 19, 2011)

Half-Orc said:


> She never, ever samples. I'm the only one who does.


Well, if I didn't sample I think I'd try the $0.99 books too!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

"I've owned ereaders since the rocket book in the early 90's (I also owned ebookman and read off my palm.)  The vast majority of ebooks were $2-3 more than the print prices all the way up until Amazon allowed self publishing."

(Sorry, I don't know who said this - but I had to respond)

I've been reading ebooks since the 90's too, and I never found a price that was higher than print.  Most of the time they were a little bit lower.  But maybe that's because if the price was too high, I ignored it.

Camille


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Nathan -

  Regarding paper copies, I understand that your point was partially about knowing how long the book is.  The paper decision in general reminds me of one of the points that Evo Terra at podiobooks.com constantly drives home to us:  let the reader choose how to consume your work. The ebook I released last week has a paper edition coming out from Createspace any day now (he shakes his head at how Amazon's definition of "5 to 7 days" is different than the one the rest of us use.  I feel like in the movie The Princess Bride - "I do not think that word means what you think it means")
It's still only $39 annually at Createspace plus about $10 for a proof if it only takes one.

  There are some potential costs of course:
-Paying more for the cover, since you need a spine and a back, formatted correctly
-Paying for book layout
-More time to make sure it all works

  It's at least something worth thinking seriously about.  My mini-novel coming out next month (35K words) will be ebook only, 99 cents.  My next novel I will almost certainly do a print edition along with the ebook.  But my marginal costs for the cover and layout are minimal.  It may not make sense for a lot of authors if it's gonna cost an extra $500. at least until they start to sell some books.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

I wonder if it's because Amazon sends the sample that has impulse buyers buying impulsively. Would it be different if they allowed buyers to sample online like Smashwords html/java versions? 

Gosh, thinking of some of the drek that she must have found makes my spine tingle and skin crawl. For the love of sanity, Ms Half-Orc, sample!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> I wonder if it's because Amazon sends the sample that has impulse buyers buying impulsively. Would it be different if they allowed buyers to sample online like Smashwords html/java versions?
> 
> Gosh, thinking of some of the drek that she must have found makes my spine tingle and skin crawl. For the love of sanity, Ms Half-Orc, sample!


I would think sending samples wouldn't make that much difference. I mean, for me, it's the opposite. Because I can send a sample to my device, I don't do any impulse buys. I will very often sample a book I _know_ I'm going to buy, just so I can "bookmark" it for when I have money later.

Camille


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

daringnovelist said:


> I would think sending samples wouldn't make that much difference. I mean, for me, it's the opposite. Because I can send a sample to my device, I don't do any impulse buys. I will very often sample a book I _know_ I'm going to buy, just so I can "bookmark" it for when I have money later.
> 
> Camille


This is me, too. I *might* impulse buy a 99 cent book, but only if it has sufficient high ranking, reviews or mention somewhere (like here). Otherwise, I always sample unless I know the author is good based on past experience. I've only bought a couple books in the past year that I wouldn't rate 3 stars or higher.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

Herc- The Reluctant Geek said:


> I wonder if it's because Amazon sends the sample that has impulse buyers buying impulsively. Would it be different if they allowed buyers to sample online like Smashwords html/java versions?


Just a couple of hours ago I was wishing I could sample a book in the browser instead of having to send it to my kindle. I'd love for them to enable that.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

Music & Mayhem said:


> I just bought a Joe Konrath novel for .99 and I'm reading it. It's not Lee Child, but it ain't bad.


Next time I hang out with Lee, I'll tell him you said that. 

I've recently interviewed a lot of authors who have hit the Top 100 with 99 cent ebooks, so I decided to try it myself.

At $2.99, my ebook The List has sold over 20,000 copies. But it never was in the Top 100.

Ten days ago, I dropped the proce form $2.99 to 99 cents.

Currently it is ranked #79.

Not only am I making more money than I was at $2.99 (it was ranked at 1100), but it has also give my other ebook sales a nice boost.

Now, I don't believe everyone will have these results, and I don't know how long this will last, but what I did was what retailers have been doing for centuries. I put an item on sale, as a loss lead, so people would buy my other items.

Happily, it didn't turn out to be a loss lead.

It will be interesting to see how long these results will last, but I foresee a business model where, once a month, I put a different novel on sale for 99 cents.

Along with uploading new titles, this seems like a no-brainer way to increase sales.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

I guess if I have a comment to make on this topic it's that I see an awful lot of indie writers on this board posting threads about how they're selling 1000 / 2000 plus books... and very, very few of them are priced higher than 99 cents / 70p. 

Which means that while there's a lot of lovely ego massaging going on, there's not a lot of first-time / indie / non-established writers making much of a profit. There might also be a lot of books sitting on people's Kindle's potentially not actually getting read.


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

An you have Shaken out for free to us Vine reviewers.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

NickSpalding said:


> I guess if I have a comment to make on this topic it's that I see an awful lot of indie writers on this board posting threads about how they're selling 1000 / 2000 plus books... and very, very few of them are priced higher than 99 cents / 70p.
> 
> Which means that while there's a lot of lovely ego massaging going on, there's not a lot of first-time / indie / non-established writers making a profit. There might also be a lot of books sitting on people's Kindle's potentially not actually getting read.


Those are good points. Though I suspect many authors do make a profit selling a thousand books a month at 99 cents, they just don't make a living. Not many traditionally published authors make a living, either. I have felt all along that the switch to ebooks is not going to wind up with a lot *more* authors making a living, it's going to wind up with different authors making a living. Authors who are better at promotion/platform building and authors who are prolific. More books will be sold because prices will settle somewhere between $1 and $5, but some of the extra sales won't be read.

So while I agree that a lot of people are selling a lot but not making that much money, I'm not sure this is ever going to change. I do think that many more authors will have the opportunity to have their work read and make small amounts of money. So the whole thing is really a net positive compared to what we have had in the past (one could argue that "quality" will suffer, which I'd say is inaccurate given that saleability not quality is the criteria tradpub uses). But I don't see it as a change where ten years from now, fifty times the number of authors who were making a living with tradpub will be able to make a living with ebooks.


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## JA Konrath (Apr 2, 2009)

edwardgtalbot said:


> Those are good points. Though I suspect many authors do make a profit selling a thousand books a month at 99 cents, they just don't make a living.


Right now my 99 cent book is making $187 a day. That's $68k a year.

I'm not saying that everyone can do that. But I do believe that the 99 cent price point is something to seriously consider.


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## Nancy C. Johnson Author (Apr 28, 2010)

"Along with uploading new titles, this seems like a no-brainer way to increase sales." (Joe Konrath)

Yep....

I bought _The List_ too, and I'm enjoying it.

Nancy


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## Paul Vitols (Feb 14, 2011)

What a fantastic thread--props to Moses Siregar for launching it.

My first book as author is still in the pipeline, so my views are those of a consumer and an observer. I offer them for what they're worth.

Among the contributors so far, I find myself closest in mindset with Camille LaGuire, especially the point that books are not a commodity. For some years I've felt that the publishing industry was making a mistake in treating its own product as fungible by pricing all books similarly despite their having vastly different levels of demand from readers. To me, the idea that there is or should be a standard price for "books" is a mistake, and merely a holdover from this uneconomic habit of thought. The differences between books are much greater than their similarities, and even if all other things were equal, which they're not, I would expect them naturally all to have different prices.

So what _should_ a book's price be? For the author who is concerned with revenue, the price that earns the maximum profit. This will be neither the highest nor the lowest possible price. As for what it is specifically, that's always hard to gauge, but another revolutionary feature of this changing publishing world is that authors themselves, as I understand it, can _set_ their own prices, and change them at will. This lets you experiment with price and see how things go, as Joe Konrath is doing (and my deep thanks to him for sharing his experiences so generously). For my part, I'm starting to think of price as being a kind of throttle control that the author should be willing to move around in order to find the optimum (revenue-maximizing) level.

For e-publishing these are still very early days. The rocket is still accelerating, its destination is unknown--and we get to be on it! I for one am very excited.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Jack Kilborn said:


> Right now my 99 cent book is making $187 a day. That's $68k a year.
> 
> I'm not saying that everyone can do that. But I do believe that the 99 cent price point is something to seriously consider.


Jack/Joe - I think you're absolutely right. The key is going to be staying on top of things, seeing what happens, and experimenting.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Paul -- thanks for the shout out.

One thing I like to point out is that publishers actually don't price all books the same.  Up until now, every single title has always been available at many different prices -- Special edition HB, ordinary hardback, trade paper, mass market paper, discount, premium used, standard used, discount used, library, lending and trading.

Up until now, every demographic was covered in terms of accessibility to books.  And frankly, publishing was made possible by the fact that books were durable goods.  They are expensive to manufacture and distribute and develop, and the price was always supported by the fact that most books were shared by multiple users - via the used market, sharing and trading.  Because the aftermarket didn't give money to the publishers directly, publishers never recognized what an important part of the publishing "ecosystem" these customers were.

A part of all this fussing over price is because with ebooks there is no aftermarket -- so how the heck do we deal with the fact that we have many different audiences?  It's going to be a constant negotiation, imho.

Camille


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Jack Kilborn said:


> Right now my 99 cent book is making $187 a day. That's $68k a year.
> 
> I'm not saying that everyone can do that. But I do believe that the 99 cent price point is something to seriously consider.


Agreed. But only when you have multiple titles and a platform. There's way too many first time writers with only one book and no platform who are pricing at 99 cents to get rankings and an ego boost, rather than trying to build a reputation and a career. You spent years building your brand and honing your craft Joe, so the sales for your stuff at 99 cents is understandable and deserved.


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## Aidan (Jan 26, 2011)

To be honest I'm torn on the pricing model, while there is proof that clearly more units are sold at the lower price and my audience is far greater in terms of the opportunity to sell I also feel that we've got to a stage with Ebook pricing where we've actually cut our own throats on projects we've laboured long and hard over.

If I've worked this out correctly, a book that will have taken me 2 years to write at a $0.99 will provide me with with 22 pence (I'm in the UK) for every copy sold.
Given that I need to get the book professionally edited means I need to sell in the region of 800 copies before I even start making money on the book.

I find this a little disheartening on the whole that we've got to a point where we're literally scraping the lowest pricing possible in order to gain readership.

Like I say I can clearly see the benefits that low pricing is doing for most authors who are making good numbers but its a shame we've had to pursue this pricing route.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Aidan said:


> If I've worked this out correctly, a book that will have taken me 2 years to write at a $0.99 will provide me with with 22 pence (I'm in the UK) for every copy sold.
> Given that I need to get the book professionally edited means I need to sell in the region of 800 copies before I even start making money on the book.
> I find this a little disheartening on the whole that we've got to a point where we're literally scraping the lowest pricing possible in order to gain readership.
> Like I say I can clearly see the benefits that low pricing is doing for most authors who are making good numbers but its a shame we've had to pursue this pricing route.


Unfortunately, it's even less than that. 99c equals 70p, but that's with our VAT already added, so you only get paid for a bit less than 60p a book, getting you 19p a book. But on US sales you lose a further 30% of every sale in US tax - and it's virtually impossible to get it back out of them if you're overseas. So in the US, you're earning a princely 20 cents (or 12p) per book.


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## Aidan (Jan 26, 2011)

Nick - that's painful, truly painful, 12p per book for every U.S sale, hadn't factored VAT either so 19p is another wake up call. I was trying to get 1000 words a day down but now I feel to motivation seeping away.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Aidan said:


> Nick - that's painful, truly painful, 12p per book for every U.S sale, hadn't factored VAT either so 19p is another wake up call. I was trying to get 1000 words a day down but now I feel to motivation seeping away.


Actually... use to it motivate you to write something good enough to confidently charge more money for. That's the secret here.

Readers will pay more for very good books and there's a proper profit to be had.

I don't claim that Life With No Breaks is anything special, but I'm still drawing £300 plus a month from it at the moment. When I put out a novel, it will be priced at a comparable amount to LWNB. I may not fly to the top of the rankings, but I also won't just punt my work out for the least amount of money for the instant gratification. I'd like to think I'm a good enough writer to ask for more from my audience and for them to demand more of me.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

NickSpalding said:


> Here's how I think it'll go:
> 
> Imagine being Jonny New Kindle owner...
> 
> ...


This is almost how it worked out for me as a committed reader. Except I gave up at 5 without having found readable self published book. Perhaps that may have been because I got my Kindle in '07, so started looking at the .99 cent ones a little later when any _writer_ was first allowed on the platform to publish whatever they felt worthy.



> Jonny only looks at books that cost more now, and he always downloads a sample.


This is me now. My time is important to me.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Aidan said:


> To be honest I'm torn on the pricing model, while there is proof that clearly more units are sold at the lower price and my audience is far greater in terms of the opportunity to sell I also feel that we've got to a stage with Ebook pricing where we've actually cut our own throats on projects we've laboured long and hard over.
> 
> If I've worked this out correctly, a book that will have taken me 2 years to write at a $0.99 will provide me with with 22 pence (I'm in the UK) for every copy sold.
> Given that I need to get the book professionally edited means I need to sell in the region of 800 copies before I even start making money on the book.
> ...


There are a couple of issues here, I think -- just an opinion, feel free to disagree. 

1. We can't afford to take two years to write a novel any more. That model worked when it took five years to get it sold and in print (sorta - and only because it was the only model we had). Dean Wesley Smith talks about writing fast much better than I could and he's right.

2. It's not a given that you need to get the book professionally edited. I would argue that it's much more important for you to create a reader-based platform than to have a professional editor. There's no question that a GOOD editor can help improve a work. A bad editor just makes your work unfeasible. There *is* such a think as "good enough" and remember that no matter HOW good an editor, because you're indie, there'll *always* be the line "Only found a few typos and grammatical mistakes." (now if they'd only tag that on Big6 books, I'd find it less disengenuous).

3. There is a revenue curve for every genre, every book. A point exists on that curve where revenue is maximized. It may or may not be 99 cents. Platform is more important than position in terms of predicting and promoting sales. It's also not fixed and what might work early in the lifecycle of a work may not work later. We haven't had ebooks around long enough to know.

A lot of writers hate it that they have to be business people, too. Not "instead," not "in addition" but "too." It's part of the job. It always has been.

As I say, just my opinion. Your mileage is probably on a different path.


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## Sharlow (Dec 20, 2009)

NickSpalding said:


> Actually... use to it motivate you to write something good enough to confidently charge more money for. That's the secret here.
> 
> Readers will pay more for very good books and there's a proper profit to be had.
> 
> I don't claim that Life With No Breaks is anything special, but I'm still drawing £300 plus a month from it at the moment. When I put out a novel, it will be priced at a comparable amount to LWNB. I may not fly to the top of the rankings, but I also won't just punt my work out for the least amount of money for the instant gratification. I'd like to think I'm a good enough writer to ask for more from my audience and for them to demand more of me.


Nick I'm sorry, but why does your last few postings feel a bit insulting to me. I'm not quite sure how you can make blanket statements about people who are using 0.99 pricing to market their books? Isn't it their prerogative to sell their work for what they want? I'm just at a loss for some of your comments.

I'm sure you have read some of Jacks post on his blog haven't you? If you have, then you know that Jack doesn't like to having people say that his results are only because of who he is. He has shown in his posts that there are plenty of people who are doing quite well with no prior *platform*. I personally think he's kind of like the godfather of Indy publishing. I found his blog long before I found this board, and before I self published. I was just reading Amanda's archive blogs, and seen that he was part of the reason she went Indy, after finding his blog. I'm sure there are a lot more people he has inspired.

So why insult the man by saying he is successful just because of who he is? By the way I'm one of those that has went the 0.99 route. I was making less then a hundred dollars for 10 months before changing to this price pattern. As of right now, this month I will have earned over $1,300, compared to the $40-$90 I was earning before at the $2.99 price. According to my calculations, if my sales continue at their present rate, and I see no reason why they wont as they seem to be continuing to accelerate, I should be expecting to make over $3,000 in March.

For the record, I'm nobody. My prior sales records speak for themselves. So it really blows me away, when people around here seem intent on telling everyone how stupid pricing 0.99 is. Will this work for everyone. I don't think so. But to just discount the idea of the marketing platform as people who don't value their work, is a bit ludicrous.as well as insulting. Also, please don't try to write me off as another one of those exception people. If you don't like pricing your work for such a price, great for you. I'm sure you have a lot of use for that $300 you get each month. I for one am trying to support myself with my writing. $3,000 is a little bit more doable for me, then say...$300.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Nathan Lowell said:


> There are a couple of issues here, I think -- just an opinion, feel free to disagree.
> 
> 1. We can't afford to take two years to write a novel any more. That model worked when it took five years to get it sold and in print (sorta - and only because it was the only model we had). Dean Wesley Smith talks about writing fast much better than I could and he's right.


Thanks for the invite, and I'll disagree. If you want to maximize the odds that you'll end up writing transitory literature that will not outlive yourself, then by all means barrel on, treat your career as a continuous game of NANOWRIMO. I'd rather take three years, if necessary, to write a book I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of, that has to start from scratch to find readers, than to compromise the product itself. It's the difference between getting paid to have sex and making love, IMO.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Eric C said:


> Thanks for the invite, and I'll disagree. If you want to maximize the odds that you'll end up writing transitory literature that will not outlive yourself, then by all means barrel on, treat your career as a continuous game of NANOWRIMO. I'd rather take three years, if necessary, to write a book I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of, that has to start from scratch to find readers, than to compromise the product itself. It's the difference between getting paid to have sex and making love, IMO.


I see where both of you are coming from.

I think it goes back to "every writer is different." Some will make more money writing one book every two or three years (most likely in traditional publishing, but possibly as an indie, too). Many more will do better by writing faster. Gotta be yourself and let the chips fall.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

1. At any given time, an author is a price taker. He can certainly set his price anywhere he chooses for whatever reason he chooses, but he has no control over the price that will maximize his revenue. Nothing any author does can change the revenue maximizing price he gets today.

2. Promotion shifts the demand curve to the right. An author can use non-pricing activities to move the future demand curve. Changing price does not effect the the demand curve, it only moves along it. Pricing is a tactic to move along the demand curve. Promotion is a tactic to shift the whole curve.

2. The market does not care how much effort went into producing a book. All consumers care about is the final product, not how it came to be.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Eric C said:


> Thanks for the invite, and I'll disagree. If you want to maximize the odds that you'll end up writing transitory literature that will not outlive yourself, then by all means barrel on, treat your career as a continuous game of NANOWRIMO. I'd rather take three years, if necessary, to write a book I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of, that has to start from scratch to find readers, than to compromise the product itself. It's the difference between getting paid to have sex and making love, IMO.


Fair enough.

As Moses says, "Every writer is different." We come in with different goals, different needs, and different desires. I think he's right some will make more more money writing one book every two or three years. I'm not terribly likely to be that person because I just lack the patience. I have too many stories to tell and if I tell some of them badly in the rush to get them all out, I'm ok with that as long as each story gets better as it goes.

You're entitled to your opinion and I'll defend your right to hold it. Next time we're at the same conference, I'll buy you a drink.


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## Courtney Milan (Feb 27, 2011)

> If you want to maximize the odds that you'll end up writing transitory literature that will not outlive yourself, then by all means barrel on, treat your career as a continuous game of NANOWRIMO. I'd rather take three years, if necessary, to write a book I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of, that has to start from scratch to find readers, than to compromise the product itself.


All styles of writing--prolific versus painstaking--have resulted in lasting literature.

Shakespeare was incredibly prolific. Dickens's entire life was a NaNoWriMo game. Trollope wrote thousands of words every day, on the clock, while working a day job. And there are authors we have never, ever heard of today who took ten years to write every manuscript, only to have it disappear into obscurity. Find a list of the most famous authors of all time, and I bet you at least half of them fell into the "prolific" camp.

Time is not an indication of quality or longevity. It's just an indication of time, which is an indication of what works best for the author.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Nathan Lowell said:


> You're entitled to your opinion and I'll defend your right to hold it. Next time we're at the same conference, I'll buy you a drink.


Sweet!


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

CM said:


> All styles of writing--prolific versus painstaking--have resulted in lasting literature.
> 
> Shakespeare was incredibly prolific. Dickens's entire life was a NaNoWriMo game. Trollope wrote thousands of words every day, on the clock, while working a day job. And there are authors we have never, ever heard of today who took ten years to write every manuscript, only to have it disappear into obscurity. Find a list of the most famous authors of all time, and I bet you at least half of them fell into the "prolific" camp.
> 
> Time is not an indication of quality or longevity. It's just an indication of time, which is an indication of what works best for the author.


Time IS usually an indication of quality, and most authors aren't capable of being Dickens, etc. Granted there is wide variation in talent, skill, and persistence, so how long it takes to produce a personal best book varies considerably by author and book. My real point is: Don't say to me I can't afford to take two years to write a book. There are very successful authors who take five or more years between books. Maximizing revenue at all costs is not why I do this. Maximizing revenue using the best books I can write is.


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

Eric C said:


> ... Maximizing revenue at all costs is not why I do this. Maximizing revenue using the best books I can write is.


On this we see eye to eye.


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## Courtney Milan (Feb 27, 2011)

> Time IS usually an indication of quality, and most authors aren't capable of being Dickens, etc.


Most authors aren't capable of being J.D. Salinger, either, no matter how many years they spend.

I'm not trying to tell you that you can't take 2 years--or 10--to write your book. Only you know that. Just don't tell someone else that their book is ephemeral crap because they wrote it quickly.

The book that took 14 painstaking months to write, where I tossed out 400,000 words just trying to make it good enough, was nowhere near as good as the book I wrote in 3 months. Time spent had NOTHING to do with quality.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Sharlow said:


> Nick I'm sorry, but why does your last few postings feel a bit insulting to me. I'm not quite sure how you can make blanket statements about people who are using 0.99 pricing to market their books? Isn't it their prerogative to sell their work for what they want? I'm just at a loss for some of your comments.


Not my intention to insult, so apologies to anyone who feels it came across that way. It's just that in my opinion pricing as low as possible is not the best route to a career as a writer with longevity. I may of course be completely wrong about this. And I don't think I insulted Joe... he himself pointed out that his kind of figures might not be possible for everyone. What I meant is that he's a good, established writer who's had a lot of time, practise and patience with his writing that's leading to dividends for him now. And there are indeed other writer's out there with the talent to sell lots of books whatever the price.

But I stand by my opinion that a lot of writers are pricing low for the instant gratification of high rankings. I know it's probably not an opinion that's going to win me friends, and I'm certainly not saying it applies to everyone, but I believe it is a factor. And there are books out there that could be selling for far more than the bottom price...as someone who works in marketing it makes my teeth itch when something is undersold.

Oh, and just to be a tiny bit pedantic...it was £300. I'm in the UK, not America.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

NickSpalding said:


> But I stand by my opinion that a lot of writers are pricing low for the instant gratification of high rankings. I know it's probably not an opinion that's going to win me friends, and I'm certainly not saying it applies to everyone, but I believe it is a factor.


See, this I can agree with. If you've got a solid _reason_ for pricing 99 cents (you think you have a legitimate shot at top 100, or you have a lot of other books, or its an intro to a series, etc) then go for it. If you're doing it because sales suck and you think it'll be a magical solution...yeah. Things might not go over well.

But this...



Eric C said:


> If you want to maximize the odds that you'll end up writing transitory literature that will not outlive yourself, then by all means barrel on, treat your career as a continuous game of NANOWRIMO. I'd rather take three years, if necessary, to write a book I can be proud of, that my children can be proud of, that has to start from scratch to find readers, than to compromise the product itself. It's the difference between getting paid to have sex and making love, IMO.


This is a little insulting. Writers WRITE. They write A LOT. It should be _natural_ to produce a lot of written material. It may or may not all be good. It might need a lot of re-writing. But seriously, the idea that I should crank out a novel in a few months and then spend years editing, editing, editing is just ludicrous to me. Do some people do that? Of course. Do some people _need_ to do that? Of course. But to claim that because I can devote a lot of time writing each day, or can write faster than 10 words a minute, somehow demeans the work...? Dear lord, we're trying to entertain people. I will be proud of what I've accomplished years from now, as will my children. They'll be impressed by the story I produced, not how friggin' long it took me to do it.

To those who do take a long time to write a book, I don't look down on you, and I don't view you as inferior (though nor do I view you as superior). But I think it is safe to say, in a business sense, you're at a _disadvantage_ with how the current Kindle market is working. Nothing bumps up sales and exposure like another book. Amanda Hocking would not be where she is today if she had put out Book 1 of My Blood Approves last year, and that's it. She put out another book, and another, and then the Trylle books, one after another after another. I highly, highly doubt ten years down the road she's going to look back and think "Wow I wish I had slowed down and wrote less."

On the flip-side, though, I will say this (and maybe this is more what Eric was getting at): trying to hurry your writing, and to go far faster than you are comfortable with, cut corners, and release a product you aren't as happy with just to try and crank out more books each year, is definitely not the way to go, and will only dissatisfy those who enjoy your writing. Just please, don't try to say the opposite, that those who do write fast, and do put out a lot of material, are somehow producing inferior products doomed to flare out and die in a few years.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

NickSpalding said:


> Oh, and just to be a tiny bit pedantic...it was £300. I'm in the UK, not America.


Actually, I think this is a good point now I've thought about it. My pricing strategy has to be higher simply because us non Americans get shafted good and proper by the tax system / VAT etc. etc. 99 cents is even less of a viable financial stand point for us. Amazon need to sort this situation out. NOW. I tend to get a bit narked when everyone outside the US is routinely forgotten about.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"But I stand by my opinion that a lot of writers are pricing low for the instant gratification of high rankings."_

I wouldn't dispute that. But I would also observe others are pricing low because they have learned that is their revenue maximizing price.

When I observe a low price I don't know how to determine the author's motivation.


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I wouldn't dispute that. But I would also observe others are pricing low because they have learned that is their revenue maximizing price.


True, but I don't think there's that many of them. A lot of the time these days new writers are auto-pricing at 99 cents because they see everyone else is doing it, despite the fact that they may be chronically underselling. Readers will and do pay more for high quality books that are professionally written, laid out and marketed. I guess I'd just like to see more writers having faith in their work and ask a bit more of the audience. Otherwise we're going to get nailed at this cheap level, which undervalues the entire community IMO.


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## edwardgtalbot (Apr 28, 2010)

Oh goodie, this discussion has been around for centuries 

As usual, I think Nathan expresses the closest to my feelings on the matter, including the respecting the right to disagree. If Eric didn't take his time writing Crack-Up, maybe I wouldn't think it's the best indie thriller I've read. On the other hand, I know of plenty of authors who take over a year to write books that I don't like. And I'd far rather read a modern thriller writer who puts out two books a year than the vast majority of the authors of classics, prolific or otherwise.  Just my own personal preference.

There is probably room for many different approaches. I do suspect that writers who don't put out a minimum of a book a year will be facing longer odds of making a living than more prolific ones as time goes on. But that's no different than literary writers facing longer odds than popular genre writers over recent decades. I really suspect that when the dust settles, making a living from writing will still be almost as along a shot as it was ten years ago, it will just be different writers doing it, and they will be doing it with fewer intermediaries. And as before, making a living will not be the only consideration for many writers.

It sounds trite, but if there ever were a time for us to respect different approaches, this great unknown period in ebook publishing is it.


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## monicaleonelle (Oct 7, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> http://ireaderreview.com/2011/02/19/what-happens-if-ebook-prices-drop-to-the-1-to-5-range/
> 
> Check out the article for some other interesting thoughts, including some speculation about positive changes that could come from cheaper ebook prices.
> 
> For the record, I think the race to $1 is a bad thing for authors and in many ways a bad thing for readers, too, because it's bad for traditional publishing and because with less profit to be made by indie authors at 99 cents, less time and energy will go into the production of indie books, as well.


I agree with your thoughts, that a race to the bottom is never good. It seems like this will not happen though because at some point, like you said, the books will be lower quality. You look at blogs, for example, and the content is actually free. There are still no people reading some blogs, and there are other blogs that people would pay quite a bit of money to read.

There are books out there that I would pay $20 or $30 for just to get them right when they come out. Usually these books are by authors I love, and they are typically the 3rd or 4th book in the series. I think a big problem in the book industry is the idea that all books should be priced within a very narrow range. Newer authors with debut novels and no following should be priced in the $1-$5 range, while a hardcover of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the stroke of midnight from your local bookstore should probably be priced in the $30 range.

I hope the e-publishing revolution allows us to break out of some of these pricing conventions and limitations... they are as archaic as the publishing industry that created them.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Oddly enough I agree that one can't predict the quality of any individual book by how long the author took to write it, or predict how skilled a particular author is in general by how fast s/he publishes.

What I suppose I'm really advocating is: take all the time the book needs to be written because, to the extent that you cut corners, it'll bite you in the end, even as it serves your pocketbook in the beginning.

(Thanks for the shout-out, Edward.)


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

This thread is fascinating to me because I've noticed absolutely no relationship between quality and price. I've purchased very expensive books that I later regretted (just finished one in fact that was frankly a jumbled mess and produced by a big traditional publisher) and then found other, excellent books at rock bottom prices, e.g. $0 or $.99.

The pricing is all over the map. There is no rhyme nor reason to it, although of late, there's been a rash of pricing at $.99 by authors trying to garner interest in their books. They may be the author's 10th book or someone's 1st book. Some are good, some are awful.

It's confusing and in a sense, demoralizing, because other than diligently reading reviews, there's really no way for a reader to figure out quality by price or any other easily discernable attribute. Thank goodness you can read excerpts in many cases. That helps. It also worries me that the "new price" for ebooks will be $.99 instead of the "regular" $2.99 and there's no way to go any lower, so...what is the impact of that going to be on new authors?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Otherwise we're going to get nailed at this cheap level, which undervalues the entire community IMO. "_

There are multiple ways of determining value. In terms of price, some authors use the unit cost as an indication of value. Other authors use total revenue as an indication.

Individual consumers use unit cost. The aggregate market expresses value as total revenue.

I still lack the ability to determine seller motivation or faith in their work from observed price.

_" It also worries me that the "new price" for ebooks will be $.99 instead of the "regular" $2.99 and there's no way to go any lower, so...what is the impact of that going to be on new authors?"_

Authors may think they control price. They don't. They operate within parameters set by Amazon. Amazon will control price through those parameters in order to maximize overall profit of Amazon.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

Sharlow said:


> So why insult the man by saying he is successful just because of who he is? By the way I'm one of those that has went the 0.99 route. I was making less then a hundred dollars for 10 months before changing to this price pattern. As of right now, this month I will have earned over $1,300, compared to the $40-$90 I was earning before at the $2.99 price. According to my calculations, if my sales continue at their present rate, and I see no reason why they wont as they seem to be continuing to accelerate, I should be expecting to make over $3,000 in March.


Did anything more go into this than just dropping the prices to $0.99? Did you do anything else drove your sales so high? I'm going to be putting material out soon and I keep going back and forth about pricing. Real success stories of very point in the price range are very helpful to us noobs.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

NickSpalding said:


> True, but I don't think there's that many of them. A lot of the time these days new writers are auto-pricing at 99 cents because they see everyone else is doing it, despite the fact that they may be chronically underselling. Readers will and do pay more for high quality books that are professionally written, laid out and marketed. I guess I'd just like to see more writers having faith in their work and ask a bit more of the audience. Otherwise we're going to get nailed at this cheap level, which undervalues the entire community IMO.


Well I'm not going to speak for other authors using 99 cent pricing strategies, but I've put a lot of thought into my own strategy to the extent that I've been conducting a six month long quasi-experiment. The results aren't really in yet, it's early days, but indications are that the strategy is starting to pay off.

My 99 cent book has now sold about 13,000 copies while my $2.99 book has until recently sold very, very little. This latter book has only one review and is quite hard to find in the "customers who bought" areas. I've advertised the book very little, only once, as I recall, and yet, with virtually nil Amazon site visibility, and virtually no marketing, and despite a high price (for indie books, I mean) it's suddenly selling. Why? I can't think of a reason left (besides chance) except that enough of those 13,000 plus buyers of my 99 cent book have finally got deep enough into their TBR piles to read and enjoy the book, and they've come looking for more from me.


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Terrence OBrien said:


> I still lack the ability to determine seller motivation or faith in their work from observed price.


What a terrible handicap! My condolences.


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## Will Write for Gruel (Oct 16, 2010)

Explain to me why it matters what others do in terms of pricing? Write a great book and sell it at $5.99 or $0.99 -- what difference does it make to others? Writer A may be more interested in sales and exposure. Writer B may be more interested in the bottom line. Writer C may simply not be selling much and so experiments with the $0.99 price. 

Who has control over the price of your book? Your publisher? Why, that's you! 

And if it bothers some to see some $0.99 books selling well, those people are not going to be happy indie publishers. The $0.99 book is here to stay unless Amazon raises the minimum price. If it works for some, and it has, many others will try it.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Explain to me why it matters what others do in terms of pricing?"_

It would matter if one could both set prices and control supply. However, in a market with unlimited supply and no barriers to entry it doesn't work. I suspect this eBook pricing and supply situation will be fodder for economists for the next hundred years.

We also have a gatekeeper who has left the gate open. We can expect people to do their best to fill that vacuum.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

Asher MacDonald said:


> Explain to me why it matters what others do in terms of pricing? Write a great book and sell it at $5.99 or $0.99 -- what difference does it make to others? Writer A may be more interested in sales and exposure. Writer B may be more interested in the bottom line. Writer C may simply not be selling much and so experiments with the $0.99 price.
> 
> Who has control over the price of your book? Your publisher? Why, that's you!
> 
> And if it bothers some to see some $0.99 books selling well, those people are not going to be happy indie publishers. The $0.99 book is here to stay unless Amazon raises the minimum price. If it works for some, and it has, many others will try it.


I think many are afraid 99 cent ebooks will become the norm rather than the exception, which means that the book buying public will think twice about paying more.

Personally, I reckon that the powers that be will probably do a bit more to raise the price- as many have already mentioned, it's not that the gatekeepers are gone, they've just left the gate open for a while.

We've already seen Amazon apply the carrot with the 70% royalty option. If that doesn't do enough to bring the average price of ebooks to where they want them, then I think they will apply the stick. What they will be, we can only guess at this point because I don't think dropping 99 cent titles is an option. There are too many competitors who would welcome the chance to move into a piece of Amazon's market.


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## Christopher Smith (Aug 3, 2010)

Interesting.  CNET contacted me today for an interview on .99 cent pricing and how I've played with that pricing (going up to $2.99 for the weekend, for example).  Just received the list of questions.  Time to answer.  Should be interesting to see how the piece is approached.


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## Stephanie Golden (Dec 24, 2010)

It's interesting that publisher prices for Kindle editions of print best sellers are all over the map; James Patterson's latest is 12.99, while the Steig Larsson books are 5.00. I agree with those who say that things haven't shaken out yet. In the meantime I lowered my price to 2.99.


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## Guest (Mar 1, 2011)

Amy Corwin said:


> This thread is fascinating to me because I've noticed absolutely no relationship between quality and price. I've purchased very expensive books that I later regretted (just finished one in fact that was frankly a jumbled mess and produced by a big traditional publisher) and then found other, excellent books at rock bottom prices, e.g. $0 or $.99.
> 
> The pricing is all over the map. There is no rhyme nor reason to it, although of late, there's been a rash of pricing at $.99 by authors trying to garner interest in their books. They may be the author's 10th book or someone's 1st book. Some are good, some are awful.
> ...snipped here...


It's very much like wine--no real relationship between price and quality. Pinot Noirs that I used to buy for $10-15 a few years ago are now $30-40, and may be no better than the $5 Merlots I find from Chile, Australia or even South Africa. So, I just buy what I like, attending tastings (very much like reading samples in novels) and when I find one I like, I buy 3 or more bottles.

I can see 0.99 for a book in a series and the others priced higher, though I've waffled about which book to price low. You see, I'm no objective evaluator of my stuff. When I draft it I think I'm Hemingway; when I revise I think its doodoo. Well, not always but often. I know from a few years in writing workshops and teaching college writing just how bad some novels can be. There's no prof. editor in self-pubbing to clean up or help improve one's novel. No book "doctor," no pro--and family never counts. I came to fiction in my 50s, starting out with Konrath on a Listserv--and I've never looked back; I'm having a ball. Writing to me isn't work; selling is a true high. I was a business man before I was a writer. I will try to keep up with the traffic on pricing, but pricing will never be the reason nor the high that writing & selling are.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

It's interesting to me that three of the people who seem to do well at higher prices are Fantasy or SciFi writers. I think it might be because there's a bigger stigma about self-publishing among SF/F readers (in general).

Michael J Sullivan and Nathan Lowell sell very well around $4.95 or higher.

Also, I just looked at M.R. Mathias' fantasy epic. His list price is $6.59 (Amazon discounted to $5.89) and he's under 3,000 in the Kindle store right now, which is decent.

I'm sure there are others not in SF/F doing well at higher prices, too. I've seen some here. I think maybe some of them are romance writers?


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## NickSpalding (Apr 21, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> It's interesting to me that three of the people who seem to do well at higher prices are Fantasy or SciFi writers. I think it might be because there's a bigger stigma about self-publishing among SF/F readers (in general).
> 
> Michael J Sullivan and Nathan Lowell sell very well around $4.95 or higher.


I think it might be the quality of their books, rather than genre Moses. There are a lot of fantasy books out there at the 99c price point. I think Mike and Nathan's sales are down to the professionalism with which they go about things. There's nothing to distinguish their books from traditionally published ones as far as the customer is concerned.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

NickSpalding said:


> I think it might be the quality of their books, rather than genre Moses. There are a lot of fantasy books out there at the 99c price point. I think Mike and Nathan's sales are down to the professionalism with which they go about things. There's nothing to distinguish their books from traditionally published ones as far as the customer is concerned.


Right, when you see their books on Amazon you don't think they are self-published books. That's a big factor. Michael also has Robin who does an incredible job of promoting him and Nathan built up an audience of 15,000 or so listeners at podiobooks before he published his. So they also have marketing muscle or platform. Mathias is also a very aggressive promoter.

At this point, I wouldn't want to price higher than $2.99 or $3.99 unless I had a huge platform and/or considerable marketing savvy (and time to do the promotion).


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## Sharlow (Dec 20, 2009)

Alan Ryker said:


> Did anything more go into this than just dropping the prices to $0.99? Did you do anything else drove your sales so high? I'm going to be putting material out soon and I keep going back and forth about pricing. Real success stories of very point in the price range are very helpful to us noobs.


Hi Alan. It's a hard question to answer when I really think about it. I've posted about it a few times, and each time I think i remember something more. Except none of them actually guaranty that they did anything. Christmas is when I changed my price. Mid December to more accurate. I only sold 30 at that price however. January I sold almost 300 at that price, then February 1675 of that title. The other major thing I did was release a $2.99 sequel to the title that took off. It sold 24 the month I put it out, and almost 500 on February.

also I went on virtual book tour in January for a different book. It seemed like the tour was a waste of time, but I can't help wonder if maybe people looked me up, and decided to try my lower priced book instead. So as you can see, I'm not sure what actual event gave me a bump up. What I'm pretty sure is that Amazons algorithms are attributing to most my my sales at the moment. The snowball effect.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

RE - why it matters what prices others set: I don't think it does matter in an empirical way. But I think there are three reasons people worry about it:

1.) People worry that once the audience gets used to a price, they will not accept any prices higher than that.

2.) If _everyone_ is pricing 99 cents, then you won't be able to use that price to stand out.

3.) (totally psychological) if everyone is doing it, it can make people feel uncomfortable to swim against the tide, even if they believe they should.

I understand these worries, and I even think they are reasonable, but I don't really worry about any of them because 1.) books are not commodities, 2.) "And if everybody used a hammer would that make hammers less useful?" and 3.) have a little courage to stand by your convictions.

I myself don't like the 99 cent price point for novels, but I have no objection to others using it.

Camille


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

daringnovelist said:


> 2.) If _everyone_ is pricing 99 cents, then you won't be able to use that price to stand out.


_"If everybioy's somebody then no one's anybody."_
- Don Alhambra, _The Gondoliers_
W.S. Gilbert

Make mine $ .99 still. However, I will start out my new book at $ 2.99. (Usually I start them at $ 3.99, so I'm still happily, and willingly racing to the bottom).  _Vive le guff_


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

A 99 cent sale via Amazon earns an indie author roughly what a paperback sale would earn a trad author. If this is the bottom, it ain't so bad down here.

In a gate keeper-less market, IMO, it's a lot to ask a reader to take a chance on a nobody author and pop for more than 99 cents per novel. But once an author becomes known, and develops a following, that following will willingly pay more, methinks.

I really do think we're in a race to the bottom price-wise. That is to say that 99 cents will be the jumping off point for new authors. But those who develop legitimate fans will be able to charge more down the road, even if only $2.99, which would earn an indie author roughly the equivalent of a trad author's hardback sale.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Eric C said:


> A 99 cent sale via Amazon earns an indie author roughly what a paperback sale would earn a trad author. If this is the bottom, it ain't so bad down here.


Great point.

Camille


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

daringnovelist said:


> RE - why it matters what prices others set: I don't think it does matter in an empirical way. But I think there are three reasons people worry about it:
> 
> 1.) People worry that once the audience gets used to a price, they will not accept any prices higher than that.
> 
> Camille


This was the rational the publishers who are now _The Agency_ model followers used upon inception  .


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

When Amazon changed their royalties to 70% for $2.99 and above I think they misread the psyche of the writer. They probably expected writers to jump at the chance of earning 70% royalties - what busines person wouldn't!? But writers write to be read. They want readers (witness some writers giving their books away free.) Sure, they also want to earn money, but money follows readers.

What writer would take the offer of say $100 000 (or a figure that is more than they expect to earn) to destroy all their books so that no one could ever read them, and to never write again?  

On another note - I wonder how much interest Amazon earns on the money they keep for 60 days?


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## MrPLD (Sep 23, 2010)

I'd love to have had 70% on 99c option


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## Nell Gavin (Jul 3, 2010)

If anyone mentioned this, I missed it. But I caught this in the article: "With $1 and $3 and $5 books there would probably be much less motivation to pirate books."

I think it wouldn't work that way. I think pirating would go on as usual, but readers would think they aren't stealing much by downloading a free version they could buy for 99c. Low prices would almost provide moral justification for pirating by contributing an "it's really not that bad" aspect to everyone's conscience. People love to feel naughty but not evil, you know?


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"When Amazon changed their royalties to 70% for $2.99 and above I think they misread the psyche of the writer. They probably expected writers to jump at the chance of earning 70% royalties - what busines person wouldn't!?"_

The business person who wouldn't is one who expects total revenue at $2.99 will be less than total revenue at 99 cents.

I doubt Amazon missed much. I suspect they acknowledge they don't know much and are learning. They probably learned a lot nobody knew before. Now they know the distribution of authors by pricing. It's very similar to constructing an aggregate supply curve. It's valuable information they are not sharing.

So they now know what consumers will pay because they have data on all their sales, and they also know what independent authors will sell for. We can't say they succeeded or failed unless we know what they set out to do.

What do they know we don't? Number of books sold at $2.99, Books sold at 99 cents. Revenue under $3. Books sold at $4.99. Buying profile of 99 cent buyers. Average earnings of 99 cent sellers.....

If they really want a base price of $2.99, they can do that with a click of a mouse.

Random thought: If Amazon wanted to cut back their independent books, and decided to let the market tell them how to do it, might they start with the ones they know nobody has purchased for a year even at 99 cents? And variations...

And while they were doing all this they managed to become the world's dominant eBook retailer. Not too shabby.


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## Will Write for Gruel (Oct 16, 2010)

Nell Gavin said:


> If anyone mentioned this, I missed it. But I caught this in the article: "With $1 and $3 and $5 books there would probably be much less motivation to pirate books."
> 
> I think it wouldn't work that way. I think pirating would go on as usual, but readers would think they aren't stealing much by downloading a free version they could buy for 99c. Low prices would almost provide moral justification for pirating by contributing an "it's really not that bad" aspect to everyone's conscience. People love to feel naughty but not evil, you know?


Depends on the kind of pirating. For someone used to going to a torrent site, they will continue to go to those sites. For books without DRM you might have casual piracy. "Hey Julie, I just read this great book. Let me copy it and email it to you..." vs. "Hey, I read this great book that's only $0.99. Let me send you the link."


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

Nell Gavin said:


> I think it wouldn't work that way. I think pirating would go on as usual, but readers would think they aren't stealing much by downloading a free version they could buy for 99c. Low prices would almost provide moral justification for pirating by contributing an "it's really not that bad" aspect to everyone's conscience. People love to feel naughty but not evil, you know?


I think that this is also a factor, but honestly, it's a pain in the butt to pirate books compared to music. IRC is currently the only place with a decent selection of ebooks.

If I have the choice between paying 2.99 or firing up IRC and connecting (which takes a surprisingly long time), searching, trying to find a decent format, loading it into calibre and then downloading the meta data, reformatting it and then sending it by wire to my kindle to wonder if what I downloaded is a DRM-broken ebook, or a poorly scanning paper book LOADED with typos, just pragmatically, I'm going to pay $3, because the money I save is literally less valuable than the time it took to steal the book, and my time isn't even that valuable.


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## monicaleonelle (Oct 7, 2010)

Eric C said:


> A 99 cent sale via Amazon earns an indie author roughly what a paperback sale would earn a trad author. If this is the bottom, it ain't so bad down here.
> 
> In a gate keeper-less market, IMO, it's a lot to ask a reader to take a chance on a nobody author and pop for more than 99 cents per novel. But once an author becomes known, and develops a following, that following will willingly pay more, methinks.
> 
> I really do think we're in a race to the bottom price-wise. That is to say that 99 cents will be the jumping off point for new authors. But those who develop legitimate fans will be able to charge more down the road, even if only $2.99, which would earn an indie author roughly the equivalent of a trad author's hardback sale.


Once someone has built a fan base, they should be able to charge more and more for each subsequent novel, especially if it's part of a series. I would pay much more for a book like Mockingjay or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I probably would have paid $25-$30 to get those right when they came out.

Honestly, if Amazon would allow indies to set the price at free, I would go for it and probably wouldn't even think about charging until my second novel in the series was out the gate. With only one novel under my belt, I'm giving it away to whomever will read it. I would love if Amazon helped facilitate that! That said, I'm hesitant about the $0.99 price. Though people say there is no stigma attached others have said they'll overlook the book if it's priced too low. I'm hesitant but obviously others have seen success, so I'm not discounted the possibility of going there in the future.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

monicaleonelle said:


> Once someone has built a fan base, they should be able to charge more and more for each subsequent novel, especially if it's part of a series. I would pay much more for a book like Mockingjay or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I probably would have paid $25-$30 to get those right when they came out.
> 
> Honestly, if Amazon would allow indies to set the price at free, I would go for it and probably wouldn't even think about charging until my second novel in the series was out the gate. With only one novel under my belt, I'm giving it away to whomever will read it. I would love if Amazon helped facilitate that! That said, I'm hesitant about the $0.99 price. Though people say there is no stigma attached others have said they'll overlook the book if it's priced too low. I'm hesitant but obviously others have seen success, so I'm not discounted the possibility of going there in the future.


If it's 99c and in the top #100 bestseller list with lots of good reviews, would you still feel hesitant?


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

Sort of changing the subject, but I have noticed a lot of authors on this board write "series". I went looking through my books, both ebook and paper, and noticed I only own two books that are part of a series. And I failed 1/2 way through the second book in a series from  one author (not one from this board). The other, Harry Potter, I finished the series. Is series writing a genre thing? Or is it just, for lack of a better word, easier, to write characters and plots in the series form?


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## rsullivan9597 (Nov 18, 2009)

Hey Laura...

First - Watership Down is one of my favorite all times books.

Second - Series are more popular in some genre's then others - for instance police procedurals or mysteries usually follow the same "detective" and fantasy books tend to run in series.

Michael's six book series was "conceived" as multiple volumes from the get go so it wasn't a matter of writing sequels which are generally just "more adventures" with the same characters/setting.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

thanks for the explanation


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> When Amazon changed their royalties to 70% for $2.99 and above I think they misread the psyche of the writer. They probably expected writers to jump at the chance of earning 70% royalties - what busines person wouldn't!? But writers write to be read. They want readers (witness some writers giving their books away free.) Sure, they also want to earn money, but money follows readers.
> 
> What writer would take the offer of say $100 000 (or a figure that is more than they expect to earn) to destroy all their books so that no one could ever read them, and to never write again?
> 
> On another note - I wonder how much interest Amazon earns on the money they keep for 60 days?


I highly doubt that Amazon misread anything at all. They have been dealing with vendors of all stripes (amateur, pro, big and small businesses) for a very long time, and they track their behavior obsessively. You also have to remember that we have a very very warped view of what most authors sell, and what the real average in terms of price and such are. We see our own little "culture" here, and we see the outliers. We only see a tiny fraction.

Amazon makes money at the 99 cent price point. They know that the sweet spot for the audience is between 2.99 and 9.99, and they want to encourage that, but they don't NEED you do price there. If Amazon wanted all writers to jump to the 2.99 price point, they would have required it.

Camille


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## Stephanie Golden (Dec 24, 2010)

> We see our own little "culture" here, and we see the outliers. We only see a tiny fraction.


Camille makes a good point. Amazon engaged in a tussle with book publishers, who objected strenuously to prices below 9.99, and lost--because Apple decided on a different "agency" model, in which the publisher sets the retail price and the distributor takes a cut, as in traditional publishing. But not before Amazon tried to punish Macmillan for refusing to go along by deleting the 'buy' buttons on all Macmillan books.

So there are a number of forces at work out there. Is there anyone who sells their books as Google ebooks or through the iTunes store? What's your experience?


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## monicaleonelle (Oct 7, 2010)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> If it's 99c and in the top #100 bestseller list with lots of good reviews, would you still feel hesitant?


I just decided to list my novel at $0.99. It was selling okay at the higher price, but I'd rather have a large readership. I would love if it hit the top 100, of course, but there are no guarantees of success for this industry! I doubt simply listing at $0.99 can get it there, but I suppose it raises the chances for now...


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

I love what Amazon's done with their pricing and royalties, honestly. A minimum floor of $0.99 ensures we all have to charge _something_. Meanwhile, the 70% royalty encourages people to price at $2.99 and up without requiring it, letting people sell for less if they're trying to build readership or whatever.

By putting a few simple rules into the pricing system, they've gone a long ways to ensuring the market will stay healthy--it's still possible we'll all drift to the same extremes, but with different authors setting different prices for different reasons at different points in their career, it's less likely we'll all end up stuck at the bottom.

No guarantees, of course, but for now it looks like a brilliant little system.


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

I always thought the $2.99 was not to lift prices UP from 99 cents but to lure authors away from New York and the agency model. The move instantly shifted the value of ebooks in many people's minds--especially writers. This is still an incredible time to be a writer, and we should all count our blessings we were here when it happened. It's a historic moment not to be repeated.

It's an unpopular opinion, but nobody has a "right" to be a writer and sell books and have an audience. If you can find enough readers, you don't need to make much per book. And if there's no money in it, then those who don't love it and won't work to improve won't bother to write or publish anymore. And I call that an improvement for the world of readers. The Old Way wasn't that great for serving readers, but sure did a good job of discouraging half-hearted writers.

Scott


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## Guest (Mar 10, 2011)

monicaleonelle said:


> I just decided to list my novel at $0.99. It was selling okay at the higher price, but I'd rather have a large readership. I would love if it hit the top 100, of course, but there are no guarantees of success for this industry! I doubt simply listing at $0.99 can get it there, but I suppose it raises the chances for now...


Sometimes I really wonder if there is that great a difference to buyers between 2.99 and .99. I mean, look at all the price choices we have on all sorts of products. And isn't $2.99 still a dyn-o-mite! price for a good novel? And what if the novel isn't good? Is it even worth 99c? Inquiring minds reflect...by pools of poor modifiers.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

_"Sometimes I really wonder if there is that great a difference to buyers between 2.99 and .99."_

Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn't. Some have had great success in unit sales and revenue increases. Others haven't.


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## Music &amp; Mayhem (Jun 15, 2010)

Price matters to me. I refuse to pay 9.99 for a novel. I can buy a used paperback at a used bookstore for half that, or go to amazon and buy it used for even less maybe. The NY publishers are ripping us all off... the authors get next to nothing for royalties on the kindle sales and have no control over how they are priced. Meanwhile the publishers have none of the expense of printing and warehousing and shipping books, yet they still expect readers to pay top prices for ebooks.


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