# How Short Is Too Short for $2.99?



## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Readers, I'm just finishing up a side project unrelated to my series, and it's coming up a little shorter than I hoped. I think it's going to be hugely entertaining, and I look forward to getting into revisions, but it has me wondering about something.

What do you consider to be too short to pay $2.99? I realize quality has a lot to do with it, but at what point to do you ask, where's the rest of the story?


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

How short is it?

I generally feel that $2.99 is a fair price for an indie novel, and $0.99 for a short story.  If it's a novella, maybe price it at $1.99?

Daniel


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Agreed. Typically, I'd expect a full-length (indie/unknown) novel for that price.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Daniel Arenson said:


> How short is it?
> 
> I generally feel that $2.99 is a fair price for an indie novel, and $0.99 for a short story. If it's a novella, maybe price it at $1.99?
> 
> Daniel


Yeah, I didn't want to come right out and say how long in case people had varied opinions. I've also heard different declarations on what constitutes a full-length novel. I've heard 50k and I've heard 70k.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

For me, 50k is really pushing it. Closer to 70k is better.


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## Sandra Edwards (May 10, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> Yeah, I didn't want to come right out and say how long in case people had varied opinions. I've also heard different declarations on what constitutes a full-length novel. I've heard 50k and I've heard 70k.


IMO, I'd be reluctant to price anything under 70K at $2.99 because it just feels so short. But that's just me 

Sandy


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

My own take:

A novel starts at about 50,000 words... that's the NaNoWriMo minimum. So anything there or above ought to be $2.99 unless it's a $0.99 intro-to-your-series book.

Currently, shorter works seem to range between $0.99 to $1.99 on Kindle, with price dependant on length.

I'm not sure many people like paying anything for really short fiction (short story length = up to maybe 5,000 words, definitely under 10K).

Short novels/novellas are what people don't seem to mind paying for, as long as it's in the $0.99 to $1.99 range. That's 10K-30K words.

But now Amazon is apparently about to introduce Kindle Shorts, for works in that range... no one knows what price ranges they'll be encouraging for that, but if it's lower than $0.99 - $1.99, you can bet no one will tolerate $0.99 short stories at 5,000 words or less anymore...

My two cents...


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

There's no "official" definition of how long a novel is.  To me, 50k seems either like a very short novel, or a long novella.  Of course, different genres have different average lengths.  You see many epic fantasy novels over 200k.  YA novels are often shorter.  I generally support the notion that a story should just be its natural length.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Ok, I'll fess up. It's 12,000 words and I wanted to see if I could squeak it through.


Kidding, it's just a bit under 50k, and hopefully it'll reach that line in revisions. I can't say I won't make it 99cents anyway, but of course it's nice to be able to flip back and forth depending on how things are going. You know? Either way, the word count will be clear in the description.

Thanks for your thoughts, Daniel, Monique, Craig, and Sandra.


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## JenniferBecton (Oct 21, 2010)

Very interesting thread! I have been contemplating pricing because I'm preparing to release a short story and a novella, and I was wondering if people would pay anything at all for them. It's nice to have control of pricing, so I can change if I need to. Thanks for the input, and good luck with your new work, foreverjuly.


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## Daniel Arenson (Apr 11, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> Kidding, it's just a bit under 50k, and hopefully it'll reach that line in revisions. I can't say I won't make it 99cents anyway, but of course it's nice to be able to flip back and forth depending on how things are going. You know? Either way, the word count will be clear in the description.


If it's YA, just under 50k might pass as a "novel". If you're writing for adults, I'd say that seems more novella-ish to me.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

It depends on the genre, but 50k is definitely a minimum for a novel in any genre.  A lot of "light" books (romances, old fashioned puzzle mysteries, etc) are in the 50-70k region.

I think that 2.99 is a bargain price so I wouldn't worry if you are at least over 50k.  

BTW: Another option is to pair it with another short novel.  Two really tight shorter novels could be more impressive than a single inflated one.

Camille


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

JenniferBecton said:


> Very interesting thread! I have been contemplating pricing because I'm preparing to release a short story and a novella, and I was wondering if people would pay anything at all for them. It's nice to have control of pricing, so I can change if I need to. Thanks for the input, and good luck with your new work, foreverjuly.


No problem, and good luck with your work as well! I don't think I could charge for a short story by itself. Lots of people do novellas for 99 cents though.

Length does make a difference, even though the motion in the ocean is important too.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Personally, if I read the sample, and it drew me in, I would pay $2.99 for a 50,000 word novel.  It *is* a little short, but I don't think I would call it a novella.

But I would be sure to put the length in the description.  Figure out the pages if it were in print, and put that in the description.

My novel is 67,000 words and no one has ever said the book was too short.  

Vicki


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Victorine said:


> My novel is 67,000 words and no one has ever said the book was too short.


Then let me be the first. Vicki, your book was too short. I wanted more and was sad to see it end!


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> Then let me be the first. Vicki, your book was too short. I wanted more and was sad to see it end!


Awe, thanks. I think that was a compliment. 

Vicki


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## JenniferBecton (Oct 21, 2010)

I agree. I wouldn't charge for a short story, but I will definitely offer it free. I may consider charging for the novella, depending on how long it ends up being. Otherwise, it'll go free too. I see them as gifts for my readers. (I'm actually still in awe of the fact that I have a book, much less readers! )


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

A hair under 50k? Not a problem. People might notice it is on the shorter side, but if the quality is good, no one will complain.

David Dalglish


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> A hair under 50k? Not a problem. People might notice it is on the shorter side, but if the quality is good, no one will complain.
> 
> David Dalglish


So if it's bad I'll be safe with 99c though?


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## AnnaM (Jul 15, 2009)

Ah, I have experience with this dilemma.  The first two books in my series are novels The third turned out to be novella length (around 120 pages), mostly because my writing has become tighter (every word screams - does this happen to anyone else?), and I didn't have as many characters and subplots.  I priced all three books at 2.99, but feedback from readers convinced me to retag the third book (it's now .99).  I think the lower pricing on the third book is helping to sell the first two in the series.


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## keithdbz (May 19, 2010)

My newest work is just over 20k and I priced it at $2.99 which I believe to be a fair value. This is the same length as my horror novella Revolt of the Dead which sold steadily at $7.99 (publisher's price) so price really doesn't matter. If it's good, people will pay it. Now another one of my novellas _A Storm To Remember _ is 12k and that is .99

I'm not sure how the Kindle Short program is going to go because Amazon already failed with the Amazon Shorts program, (which I was involved with) people were not buying the short stories at .49, so I don't know what makes them think something has changed.


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

foreverjuly said:


> So if it's bad I'll be safe with 99c though?


Not 'bad', but 'unsatisfying.' I don't know what this story is, if it is connected to Powerless or not, etc. If it feels complete, is standalone, and is well-written, $2.99 ain't a problem even if it is only 45k or so. But if it somewhat relies on Powerless, or you're not 100% confident, or you don't plan on spending a lot of money on a cover, or if you're uncertain on what reader reaction will be, then 99 cents is the way to go.

There's also more to it. Do you want to use this story to attract readers to Powerless Series? Go 99 cents and use it as a form of advertising. You think this sucker has a chance at making money over time? $2.99.

I'm not really saying "good book = 2.99 bad book = 99 cents", though that may often be correct. Often, but not always. I'd like to think a lot of us KBers are exceptions 

David Dalglish


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Space Junque is just over 26K and it's 2.99. 

We'll probably have pricing discussions for as long as pricing is in our power -- forever, in other words. There will always be pressure to drive prices to the bottom. I'd like to see indies price work at 99 cents for short stories, 2.99 for novellas, 3.99 for genre novels (50K to 80K) and 4.99 for 90K and up. 

At those prices, a person can afford the kind of editing, cover art, and promotion that makes a good product.

Here is Samhain's pricing structure for ebooks:

Short Stories: $2.50 12,000 to 18,000 words
Novellas: $3.50 18,001 to 35,000 words
Category: $4.50 35,001 to 60,000 words
Novel: $5.50 60,001 to 100,000 words
Plus Novel: $6.50 over 100,000 words


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## David McAfee (Apr 15, 2010)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> A novel starts at about 50,000 words... that's the NaNoWriMo minimum. So anything there or above ought to be $2.99 unless it's a $0.99 intro-to-your-series book.


This.

To me, 50K = novel, albeit a short one. Ever read Mitch Albom? His books are great, but very short. I think they might even be under 40K, yet they still rate novel prices.


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## JoeMitchell (Jun 6, 2010)

Daniel Arenson said:


> How short is it?
> 
> I generally feel that $2.99 is a fair price for an indie novel, and $0.99 for a short story. If it's a novella, maybe price it at $1.99?
> 
> Daniel


I agree with this. 50k words or more would be worth $2.99, but anything less would be a novella or short story. Add some more awesomeness to the story if you think it needs to be longer.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

Thanks for your thoughts everyone. I think the Mitch Albom comparison is a good one. This book will be mostly comedy, and a comedy movie that's 90 minutes costs just as much as a 3 hour drama. 

We'll see how strong the story is on its own though if it can carry a 2.99 price. It's completely separate from Powerless or anything else. Should be fun.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Without credits, the movie The Last Exorcism ran 75 minutes.


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## Imogen Rose (Mar 22, 2010)

If your name is Snookie... you could charge whatever.    For the rest of us... depends on the audience we already have. If you have a nice fan base, I think you could charge $2.99 for a novella.


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## Judi Coltman (Aug 23, 2010)

Ya'll got me all nervous. I had to go check the electronic length of my book.  126K.  I hope that means that my $2.99 price is considered fair.


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## brucesarte (Oct 11, 2010)

To add my two cents...

At Bucks County Publishing we do all full length novels (45k-95k words) at $2.99.  Novella's (10-45k) at $1.99 and shorter is $0.99.  We haven't published anything that broaches 100k words yet but when we do we will see where we think it stands... I might say $3.49...?

We do have the Bump in the Night 2010 anthology... that is priced at $3.49 because there are multiple authors involved... gotta try and make some green for the authors... it is around 60k words if I remember correctly and has sold pretty well this month (came out 10/15).  Our #1 kindle title for October for sure...

That's my two cents


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> Space Junque is just over 26K and it's 2.99.


LK, I was actually wondering about that because I looked at the file size for your book and I was like, that can't be right! Even though I'm strongly inclined to buy it, an alarm in me head went off that said I should read the sample first or wait for a sale price. I would recommend putting the word count in your description too. I'd be afraid of making people angry if I were you.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

I charge $2.99 for The White Hairs. It's only about 23,000 words. The paperback is 120 pages.
Honestly, I wouldn't be comfortable charging less. Not because of word count, but because of quality. The book is CERTAINLY worth the price. Yes, my sales are modest, but my reviews are strong and I've never had a return. Pricing it at the minimum amazon will allow for the 70% royalty seems fair to me. Honestly, good reviews are more important than sales to me on this first work.

My illustrated short story The Song of Ballad and Crescendo goes for .99 on Amazon, the least they'll let me charge, and it's now set for "pay what you want" on Smashwords.

I'm finishing up writing my newest novel. The manuscript is 71,000 words at the moment and will probably end up being around 75k or so when I'm done. I'm strongly considering $3.99 for it.

ALL of these prices are pittances!  I don't think at this low level the price is going to be the biggest factor motivating a sale. That comes down to the cover, description, blurb, reviews, etc.


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

$2.99 is such a low price point that I would have thought almost anything goes, as long as it of good quality. I would gladly give $2.99 for a 15,000 word novella like 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'. That being said, I wouldn't pay that much for one 1,000 word short story. Unless it was really good, of course. Oh snap, this question is too hard. Can I have another?


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

I think $0.99 is too much for a short story. The Year's Best SF has 24 stories for $9.99 for the Kindle ebook. At a dollar a story, that's a $24 book. 

And I realize that the difficulty is that $0.99 is as low as you can go. I'd like to see writers bundle three short stories for that $0.99 price. Better yet, why not bundle 9 or 10 and sell them for $2.99 and get the 70% royalty rate?


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

foreverjuly said:


> LK, I was actually wondering about that because I looked at the file size for your book and I was like, that can't be right! Even though I'm strongly inclined to buy it, an alarm in me head went off that said I should read the sample first or wait for a sale price. I would recommend putting the word count in your description too. I'd be afraid of making people angry if I were you.


I'd always like to see a word count since we can't view it as a physical book. I'd like to have an idea how long something is.

I think I'd be a bit irritated if I bought something for $2.99 and it was 15,000-20,000 words and it wasn't listed as a novella and no word count was given. Yeah, I might love it, but I'd feel like the author was being deliberately cagey in not revealing that.

Is there any argument for not listing a word count when you put up a book for sale?


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

I know what you're saying. I'm struggling with this issue, and I've talked about it in other threads.

$2.99 is cheap. It's a good price for a well-done novella. It's less than most established ebook publishers charge for their novellas.

Indie authors are in love with the 99 cent price. It's as close to free as you can get. A lot of people are having success with their books, like Victorine, and attribute it to the low price. They may well be right.

I think it's dangerous for long-term health of the model to acclimate reader expectation to 99 cents -- and especially for a full-length work, let alone a novella.  99 cents seems fine for something 15K or less.

I don't want my work to be judged by whether it's as good as other indie work. I want it to be judged with other work period, indie and traditionally published alike. I'm willing to pay an editor, to pay for good cover art, and to pay for promotion and advertising. To do those things, I can't charge 99 cents.

When I ask Dear Author to review my novella, I want them to see it and judge it in the same light they regard other novellas they review. Those books go for even more than $2.99.

My long-term plan is to charge 2.99 for my novellas and 3.99 for novels. I'm aware that I'll miss a lot of sales while I'm building my brand, but my goal isn't to cater to the free/99 cent crowd. My goal is to find readers who aren't looking for the next cheap book but are looking for the next LK Rigel book.

Should I lower my prices until the brand is established? Maybe. I don't know.

So far, my readers have wished Space Junque was longer, but not one has complained about the price.

There's another side of the argument, too, and a cynical one: Readers don't care.

Readers don't care about good writing. They only care about good storytelling. Editors are nice, but not necessary. Throw up 80K words with a rousing good story, spell most of the words right, get a good cover, slap 99 cents on it and get to the next book.

Maybe I'll try that with a different pen name and see which works best, ha.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> I'd always like to see a word count since we can't view it as a physical book. I'd like to have an idea how long something is.
> 
> I think I'd be a bit irritated if I bought something for $2.99 and it was 15,000-20,000 words and it wasn't listed as a novella and no word count was given. Yeah, I might love it, but I'd feel like the author was being deliberately cagey in not revealing that.
> 
> Is there any argument for not listing a word count when you put up a book for sale?


Actually, the first line of my product description says it is a novella -- but I could easily add the word count. That's a good idea.


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## MariaESchneider (Aug 1, 2009)

My personal buying limit is around 65k for $2.99 and then...it better be good.  Anything shorter, I wouldn't want to pay $2.99 for.  I read a lot of women's fiction (and in the old days that included Harlequins which can be quite short.)  I follow some of the small publishers of mystery books too and they won't look at anything under 65k and generally speaking they prefer 80 to 85.  One of them I followed recently upped their minimum from 65 to...shoot, I think it was 70, but it might have been 75.  

50k...2.99.  If it was really, really good, I might not feel cheated, but it's kind of on the line.  If I'm paying $2.99 and expect a novel, I'm probably going to notice BUT I am not the average reader when it comes to noticing that kind of thing.  When I was reviewing, I was asked to review a very, very short novel--I'd bet it was in the 50k range.  The trade paperback price was 15 bucks.  I remember thinking, "IF I had paid 15 dollars for this (sight unseen) I'd be really, really mad when it arrived."  The book was okay, but I did mention the price in my review because 15 bucks (plus shipping for some people) is just too much for a "long novella."  At least $2.99 is better!!!

If you have some short stories, you could offer those as a bonus, but I don't like to find that at the end of a book when I'm expecting a novel--so you're in a dam*** if you do and dam** if you don't with that model.

One other thing to note, I think my cheaper stuff helps sell my other stuff.  It wouldn't be a terrible strategy to have a $1.99 book out there to attract interest.  IMO, just having more than one book out period has helped my sales.  

Maria


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> My long-term plan is to charge 2.99 for my novellas and 3.99 for novels. I'm aware that I'll miss a lot of sales while I'm building my brand, but my goal isn't to cater to the free/99 cent crowd. My goal is to find readers who aren't looking for the next cheap book but are looking for the next LK Rigel book.


I think this is a great point. We may all stay independent authors, but at some point we will (with luck) transform from amateurs into professionals, as our sales become more substantial. At that point, our competitors will be the traditional authors, the 'professionals,' and not the new indies.

We can cause long-term problems for our industry by under-valuing our work.

I think every author should have a .99 book/novella/short story available, as a front door to their body of work, but only one.


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

@LkRigel: "There's another side of the argument, too, and a cynical one: Readers don't care.

"Readers don't care about good writing. They only care about good storytelling. Editors are nice, but not necessary. Throw up 80K words with a rousing good story, spell most of the words right, get a good cover, slap 99 cents on it and get to the next book."

There's something to this too. Readers are hungry for the next book. Romance readers want that next romance, and they want it to follow the formula. Same with a lot of other genres. It's not as much about the quality of the writing, as long as it doesn't dip below a certain level, as much as it is about simply being something new in the same vein the reader wants. 

This, if you believe it, is good news for any of us who want to write genre fiction. You don't have to be Raymond Chandler to write a salable mystery. 

(I had an eye-opening experience at a garage sale a number of years ago. It was held by the children of an elderly man and they were selling all his paperbacks, among other things. This guy was an avid reader and he apparently loved spy fiction. He had paperbacks from the 1950's that were by writers I've never heard of and that probably almost no one knows now -- you wouldn't find them in libraries or anywhere I'm guessing. These were not Ian Fleming types, but people who had publishing contracts and were putting out new books every few months in a series. In other words, successful writers, making a living, completely forgotten now.)


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## MariaESchneider (Aug 1, 2009)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> I think this is a great point. We may all stay independent authors, but at some point we will (with luck) transform from amateurs into professionals, as our sales become more substantial. At that point, our competitors will be the traditional authors, the 'professionals,' and not the new indies.
> 
> We can cause long-term problems for our industry by under-valuing our work.
> 
> I think every author should have a .99 book/novella/short story available, as a front door to their body of work, but only one.


I disagree with this in part because I'm not sure we understand our audience well enough to understand pricing. I *know* I sell to the "used" book crowd. I'm competing with pro-authors--just in the used and library sections because that is where a number of my readers have always shopped and _will continue to shop_. I know this from feedback. Changing my prices may mean changing the crowd I currently sell to--not necessary having people buy my book because they've read the cheaper stuff. My only point is that it is not as simple as "pro" pricing versus "amateur" pricing. Many of the ladies who read my work don't even know that I'm self-published until after the fact (if someone happens to mention it). They bought because the books were in their standard "shopping price range."

There are many who distinguish between "what I'll pay for an indie" versus "What I'll pay for traditional." But there are also other buyers out there...who are not buying based on a "quality perception." They expect quality, they just aren't going to pay much more that 3 to 5 dollars no matter who writes the book.

Just one of those little side notes. Sorry to be OT.


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

There are a lot of great points being made here, and a lot of good arguments. It does come down to how you feel about your work though and what's most important to you. I spent a month at 2.99 for the first book in my series, and I saw sales dwindle far beyond what I was making up for with the higher price. Not only was I not reaching readers, I was losing money. It's done much better at 99c (though the last week or so...yuck), and I hope it'll draw people in to the later books in the series, which are priced at 2.99.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

The best argument (at least the one that resonates with me, ha!) for the 99 cent price is as an enticement to a series. I will want to price the first book lower once I get a series going.


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## Paul Clayton (Sep 12, 2009)

Ah, this is a good thread for me to follow.  I have a collection of short stories and one novella coming out in about three months.  So, I was going to ask this question, but...  Lessee, 50K words divided by approx 333 words per page, equals about a hundred and fifty pages.  Yeah, that's a novel.


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

IMO, if I had to slap a minimum number on there, I'd go with 50,000 words or more for $2.99. Yes, 50K is on the short end of the "novel" range, but $2.99 is on the low end of e-book pricing as well, so I still think it's fair. That's still several hours of entertainment for a few bucks.

A novella, I'd say $0.99 or maybe $1.99 if it's more like 30K or 40K words. Short stories … I dunno, I'd be hard-pressed to pay even $0.99 for a single short story when many people sell a whole novel for that. I mean, a 5,000 word short-story at $0.99 would be like selling a 50,000 word short novel for $9.99, or a 100,000 word novel for $19.99. Ouch.

Of course, this is just my opinion.


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## ASparrow (Oct 12, 2009)

If a book is awful, the shorter the better. But I'd pay up to $9.99 for a killer short story (but it would have to be very good and stand up to re-reading).


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## JenniferBecton (Oct 21, 2010)

While I believe that length is a factor in price, I don't believe it should be the defining factor. Look at writers who were paid per word: Victor Hugo for example. Their works go on and on and on and on.... You get paid by the word, then you are motivated to write more of them. And that's not necessarily always a good thing. I've always believed that prose should be precise and concise. 

Quality is crucial. That's why you get the sample. A short novel of good quality should not necessarily cost less than a long novel of average quality.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

As a reader I would pay $2.99 if I liked the sample. And, to be honest, I'd rather read a shorter, satisfying read than one that reads like words, and side shows were added it was just to make it look longer. If it was a good short book, meaning characters that I can connect to and care about and the plot is tight enough I'd feel satisfied for the price.
JMO


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## Guest (Oct 25, 2010)

JenniferBecton said:


> While I believe that length is a factor in price, I don't believe it should be the defining factor. Look at writers who were paid per word: Victor Hugo for example. Their works go on and on and on and on.... You get paid by the word, then you are motivated to write more of them. And that's not necessarily always a good thing. I've always believed that prose should be precise and concise.
> 
> Quality is crucial. That's why you get the sample. A short novel of good quality should not necessarily cost less than a long novel of average quality.


So was Charles Dickens! Brilliant! In one of my first college classes this girl was trying to sound smart by talking about how money is ruining writing, and then I trotted out Charles Dickens and it was really an "Oh, snap!" moment.



LauraB said:


> As a reader I would pay $2.99 if I liked the sample. And, to be honest, I'd rather read a shorter, satisfying read than one that reads like words, and side shows were added it was just to make it look longer. If it was a good short book, meaning characters that I can connect to and care about and the plot is tight enough I'd feel satisfied for the price.
> JMO


Thanks for your input. You can be sure I'll be trying to accomplish all of those things!


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

ASparrow said:


> If a book is awful, the shorter the better. <snip>


LOL!


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

Interesting topic.

I have a hard time considering 50k words to be novel-length, honestly. I participated in NaNoWriMo a few years back and wrote the first draft of a "novel" that was later published. My NaNoWriMo draft was just over 50k words (in accordance with that target), but when I decided to try and get it published, it was only after I had added approximately 25 - 30k more words (expanding the story). At 50k words it honestly still felt like a novella to me.

Pricing based on word count is a dicey topic, if only because there are so many indie authors out there pricing their lengthy tomes at $0.99 in an effort to attract readers. That makes a $2.99 novella a much tougher sell. Yes, I'd rather spend $2.99 on a really great novella of 48k words than a poorly written 120k word novel, but as an author, I would be afraid of making my readers feel ripped off if they felt misled about the length of the book, based on price. I am the biggest champion ever of not undervaluing our work and charging reasonable prices, especially for full-length novels, but given that $2.99 seems to be the "standard" ebook novel price, I'd be very cautious when using that price to sell a novella.



> Space Junque is just over 26K and it's 2.99.


Wow. I've seen _Space Junque_ mentioned in many threads, and I believe I've also gone to the Amazon product page, but I never realized until now that it wasn't a novel! I think that $2.99 should be the floor for a full-length novel, but (though it may sound illogical having just said that) I actually think it's a bit pricey for 26k words. To me that's a rather short novella. Maybe $2.99 isn't actually unreasonable, but if you're going to charge that I think you need to make it very clear what the reader is getting. I just glanced at your product description again and see that you describe it as a "novella", but there's no word count listed. Honestly, if I paid $2.99 for a novella, even knowing it was a novella, I'd quite possibly be pretty disappointed to find that it was only 26k words long. Even if it was a great story.

A lot of that attitude is based on factors that are out of your hands. Unfortunately the market has determined that $2.99 is a typical price for a full-length novel. Even though I personally feel that's still a bargain-basement price, it does create a certain expectation that most authors won't charge $2.99 for what feels like a glorified short story. Two novellas--or even a novella and a short story--bundled together for $2.99 would feel much more satisfying to me.

But! Who knows how your typical reader would feel? Part of my reaction to a $2.99 price on a 26k word story is definitely based on the fact that I've written many stories between 15k and 27k in less than a week. There's not a lot that can really happen in that many words. In my experience, writing a short novella requires much less work than writing a novel. If indie novels were typically selling for $5.99, a $2.99 novella wouldn't seem so expensive. Unforunately, that's not the world we live in.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> <snip>
> If indie novels were typically selling for $5.99, a $2.99 novella wouldn't seem so expensive. Unforunately, that's not the world we live in.


Sigh.

So we must put out the quality of traditional work in order to be taken seriously, but we can't price our work as if we take it seriously.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> Sigh.
> 
> So we must put out the quality of traditional work in order to be taken seriously, but we can't price our work as if we take it seriously.


I wish I could control the expectations other indie authors are creating. I think the way the pricing has shaken out is sort of a tragedy. And self-defeating. By making it harder to earn a profit, indie authors have made it more difficult to afford to create work that can truly compete with traditionally published stuff. If it were up to me, indie novels would be priced only $2-3 less than your average traditionally published work. Still a bargain, still priced in recognition of lower fixed costs, but not offered for such a pittance that making money (and funding future cover design and editorial oversight) is near impossible.


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## MarvaD (Sep 8, 2009)

Truth be told, I can appreciate a shorter book (under 60K) much more on Kindle than a monolithic 100K book. Of course, I'm still getting used to reading on Kindle, so my ability to read longer works should increase.

Me? I set the price on all my books at $2.99 because of the 70% royalty thing. Amazon is discounting them to 99 cents, $1.99, $2.39, and leaving one at $2.99. They are all novella length, but I can't figure out why the discount range.

I have three books scheduled with small publishers which will come out on Kindle. They'll be priced around $5.99. I think that's the standard for novel-length books from small publishers.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> But! Who knows how your typical reader would feel? Part of my reaction to a $2.99 price on a 26k word story is definitely based on the fact that I've written many stories between 15k and 27k in less than a week. There's not a lot that can really happen in that many words.


An *incredible* amount can happen in 23,000 words. I'm just sayin'!


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Here's something I've noticed: some stories "Feel" longer than others.  (And I don't mean boring.)

A fast paced story that has a lot of twists and turns and a good payoff will often seem longer to a reader than a story with a more straightforward plot.  With an ebook, it's harder for the reader to tell if the book is a little shorter or longer - they'll judge by a more subjective internal scale.

Camille


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

Very surprised by some of the responses in this thread.

15K -50K would be classed as a novella in my eyes.
60K - 80K is what I expect from a young adult work.
80K - 120K is what I expect from adult fiction.

I'd pay the same for a YA novel as I would for an adult novel.  I would expect to pay less for a novella, perhaps even half as much.

I'd be pissed if I thought I was getting a full length novel and ended up with only 50K words, regardless of what I paid for it.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

I posted the Samhain guidelines for length and price earlier in this thread.

That is the pool I want to swim in. That's why I pay for experienced editing and quality cover design work. I honestly don't think romance reviewers and bloggers would take me seriously if I asked them to review a 99 cent book, no matter how short.

Why should they believe I've approached the work in a professional manner if I'm not confident enough to charge a professional price?

I honestly am in a quandary over this, and I am leaning toward lowering the price of Space Junque when Spiderwork comes out, at least for an introductory period of time. But I hate the idea of making the default price for a novella 99 cents.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> An *incredible* amount can happen in 23,000 words. I'm just sayin'!


Poor choice of words, probably.  But in my experience, short novellas require less planning, it's easier to sustain tension over the length of the work, and the stories themselves are just plain simpler. They have to be, to tell them properly in so few words. For me personally, writing a novella is easier than a full-length novel--especially a novella in the mid 20k range. Which is why I value them monetarily at less than a full-length novel. When I buy a novella or novel, I am looking to invest my time in something. I am paying for the opportunity. If I pay for an experience that lasts far less time than similarly priced experiences, I'm going to be disappointed (even if it was a great experience...maybe _especially_ if it's a great experience). Same with video games--gamers tend to rate games partially on the time it takes to complete the game. I might pay $10 for a DVD of a full-length movie, but I'm not going to a buy a DVD with a single episode of a sitcom for the same price.

Again, the problem here is that the market has determined that $2.99 is relatively expensive for a short novella. I don't necessarily think it's a bad price--just a relatively expensive price, given the rest of the market and the expectations readers have when they see that price on a story.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> Poor choice of words, probably.  But in my experience, short novellas require less planning, it's easier to sustain tension over the length of the work, and the stories themselves are just plain simpler. They have to be, to tell them properly in so few words. For me personally, writing a novella is easier than a full-length novel--especially a novella in the mid 20k range. Which is why I value them monetarily at less than a full-length novel. When I buy a novella or novel, I am looking to invest my time in something. I am paying for the opportunity. If I pay for an experience that lasts far less time than similarly priced experiences, I'm going to be disappointed (even if it was a great experience...maybe _especially_ if it's a great experience). Same with video games--gamers tend to rate games partially on the time it takes to complete the game. I might pay $10 for a DVD of a full-length movie, but I'm not going to a buy a DVD with a single episode of a sitcom for the same price.
> 
> Again, the problem here is that the market has determined that $2.99 is relatively expensive for a short novella. I don't necessarily think it's a bad price--just a relatively expensive price, given the rest of the market and the expectations readers have when they see that price on a story.


In my case, I have a 23,000 word story. More than one reviewer has commented on how they plan to re-read my work again and again. How do you compare a forgettable 100,000 word book to a 23,000 word book that stays with you?
As far as planning time, again you might think the 100,000 word book would require more planning and work than the shorter one. All things being equal, that might be the case, but all things are usually not equal.

I can imagine a paragraph that has a greater effect than a novel.

But all of that aside, I think too much focus is being paid to price. .99, 2.99,3.99,10.99 are all very small amounts. If I want something, ANYTHING at that price I will buy it and not really care about the $2 difference. The key is creating that desire. Once I have my audience, I can certainly imagine giving away free stories, but I can't imagine at that stage charging .99 for anything! .99 screams "Please give me a chance!" IMHO.

Ok, let me put it this way: I wrote The White Hairs originally about six years ago. Soon after, I then wrote my first 500 page novel. You would rather read The White Hairs than that book.

Page count is not the most important factor.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Jnassise said:


> Very surprised by some of the responses in this thread.
> 
> 15K -50K would be classed as a novella in my eyes.
> 60K - 80K is what I expect from a young adult work.
> ...


I pretty much agree with this, but I'd add 10-15K is a novelette.

For me, anything up to 15K is 99 cents and I've got two at that price. I also put "novelette" in the product description.

When I put out a novella (hopefully in a few weeks), it should work out to about 35K and I'll price it at $1.99. When I put the novelettes (one more to go) and novella together into an anthology, it will be $2.99.


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## nomesque (Apr 12, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> Is there any argument for not listing a word count when you put up a book for sale?


My sole argument against is that it can be confusing to a reader. Before I started writing books for sale, I had NO idea how many words went into a book. If you'd asked me, "Would you pay $3 for a 50000 word book?" you'd have been met with a blank stare while I desperately tried to count words in a line, lines on a page, then divide into the word count, and... ow.

DEAD(ish)'s description on Kindle contains simply, "This is a very short work - novelette length." I think that's enough.

My pricing structure is similar to Gertie's.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> In my case, I have a 23,000 word story. More than one reviewer has commented on how they plan to re-read my work again and again. How do you compare a forgettable 100,000 word book to a 23,000 word book that stays with you?


I don't think anyone would dispute that any given 23,000 story can be immeasurably better than any given 100,000 word novel. That goes without saying.



> As far as planning time, again you might think the 100,000 word book would require more planning and work than the shorter one. All things being equal, that might be the case, but all things are usually not equal.
> 
> I can imagine a paragraph that has a greater effect than a novel.


Eh...assuming that as an author, you would put the same amount of time and care into writing a 23k word story as you would into writing a 100k word novel, then yes, the 100k novel is going to require more work. You are typing nearly five times as many words. Unless your long novel drags considerably, you're writing more scenes, juggling more plot points, and developing a character over a much longer story. That's just more work.

Now, of course you may put more work into your 23k word story than Author X puts into his 100k word novel. But that has nothing to do with length--it has to do with who you both are as individual authors.

When you buy a book, you are buying an experience. Most people wouldn't expect to pay the same amount of money for an experience that lasts two hours as they would for one that lasts eight hours. Maybe the two hour experience is better than the eight hour experience. But given that, all things being equal, the two hour experience cost less to produce than the eight hour experience, charging less for the two hour experience makes some kind of sense.



> But all of that aside, I think too much focus is being paid to price. .99, 2.99,3.99,10.99 are all very small amounts. If I want something, ANYTHING at that price I will buy it and not really care about the $2 difference. The key is creating that desire. Once I have my audience, I can certainly imagine giving away free stories, but I can't imagine at that stage charging .99 for anything! .99 screams "Please give me a chance!" IMHO.


I agree with much of this and have said so numerous times on this board. However, I think authors need to understand that nothing frustrates a reader more than expectations that haven't been met. That's why I think it's extremely important that if you choose to charge $2.99 for a short novella, you make it exceptionally clear that a short novella is what the reader is buying. Right or wrong, there are so many full-length indie novels out there for $2.99 and lower, you risk alienating readers who see your price tag and feel ripped off when they realize they just purchased something that's almost a quarter the length of a typical novel.

I do think that $0.99 is a perfectly reasonable price for fiction in the 10k - 20k word range. There's nothing desperate about setting a price to reflect the length of the work.



> Ok, let me put it this way: I wrote The White Hairs originally about six years ago. Soon after, I then wrote my first 500 page novel. You would rather read The White Hairs than that book.
> 
> Page count is not the most important factor.


Nobody is claiming that longer=better. Just that longer takes more time, effort, and money (if you hire an editor) to produce, and generally readers will be disappointed to pay the same price for a short novella that they would for a full-length novel..._especially_ if they are caught unaware about the length of what they're buying.

I can't tell you how many book reviews I've seen that complain about a book being too short. Often this is discussed in relation to the price. Readers do form expectations based on price, trust me.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

If you can sell a novella well at $2.99 or $3.99 or sell a novel at $4.99 or $5.99 - Huzzah! If not, then pricing might be something to revisit.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

nomesque said:


> My sole argument against is that it can be confusing to a reader. Before I started writing books for sale, I had NO idea how many words went into a book. If you'd asked me, "Would you pay $3 for a 50000 word book?" you'd have been met with a blank stare while I desperately tried to count words in a line, lines on a page, then divide into the word count, and... ow.


Very confusing as a reader, especially since we all grew up reading print books. Because of that, we go by page length. Locations are confusing enough without adding in the word count.



> DEAD(ish)'s description on Kindle contains simply, "This is a very short work - novelette length." I think that's enough.


My product page says Of Love and War - a novelette

Then when I published Only In My Dreams, I added that to the cover as well. (see the blue cover below)


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> I wish I could control the expectations other indie authors are creating. I think the way the pricing has shaken out is sort of a tragedy. And self-defeating. By making it harder to earn a profit, indie authors have made it more difficult to afford to create work that can truly compete with traditionally published stuff. If it were up to me, indie novels would be priced only $2-3 less than your average traditionally published work. Still a bargain, still priced in recognition of lower fixed costs, but not offered for such a pittance that making money (and funding future cover design and editorial oversight) is near impossible.


Depends on what you consdier "average". Personally, I usually buy paperbacks at $5.99 - 6.99. I sacrifice the "getting it right now" for the price because at the rate I read, I can't afford hardbacks all the time. At that right, $2.99 for an indie novel feels about right. I suppose if you're comparing to hardbacks, though, $2.99 is pretty steeply discounted.


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## Gordon Ryan (Aug 20, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> Yeah, I didn't want to come right out and say how long in case people had varied opinions. I've also heard different declarations on what constitutes a full-length novel. I've heard 50k and I've heard 70k.


July, I personally don't think anything under 60k is a full length novel. In my genre, 100,000 is more the norm. At least 350 - 400 pages, printed edition. As I understand it, romance novels are a bit shorter, with the 60k mark more common. But a 40k novel is a bit short, IMO, for a 2.99 pricing.

On the other hand, some erotica I have read about (on the DTP forum) is in the 20 - 25k mark and still commands 2.99.

Gordon Ryan

Gordon Ryan


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> I honestly am in a quandary over this, and I am leaning toward lowering the price of Space Junque when Spiderwork comes out, at least for an introductory period of time. But I hate the idea of making the default price for a novella 99 cents.


I wouldn't think of it as $.99 for a novella, but as a paid, long sample of your work. And I'd probably wait to drop the price until you've got Spiderwork and Bleeder out. My .02 cents (<flash fiction )


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Arkali said:


> I wouldn't think of it as $.99 for a novella, but as a paid, long sample of your work. And I'd probably wait to drop the price until you've got Spiderwork and Bleeder out. My .02 cents (<flash fiction )


It feels like this is how it's probably going to shake out.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Gordon Ryan said:


> July, I personally don't think anything under 60k is a full length novel. In my genre, 100,000 is more the norm. At least 350 - 400 pages, printed edition. As I understand it, romance novels are a bit shorter, with the 60k mark more common. But a 40k novel is a bit short, IMO, for a 2.99 pricing.
> 
> On the other hand, some erotica I have read about (on the DTP forum) is in the 20 - 25k mark and still commands 2.99.
> 
> ...


I've got two historical romance novels, both priced at $2.99. One is 111K and the other is 168K. I was going to price the second one at $3.99, but I'm not comfortable with that.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> But all of that aside, I think too much focus is being paid to price. .99, 2.99,3.99,10.99 are all very small amounts. If I want something, ANYTHING at that price I will buy it and not really care about the $2 difference.


I don't know how much you read a month, but avid readers, at least this one, does not usually think that way. If I spent $10.99 on every book I bought, I'd spend an average of $165 / month on books. Compare that to $5.99 per book - that's $70 a month. I can do a lot with $70. The $2.99 price point is especially nice. Nice enough that I don't think I've bought a traditionally published book in over a month.

Plain english: You can't compare ONE item at $3 to ONE item at $11 with avid readers. If I only bought one book a month, sure, I wouldn't care about the $5. But I buy MANY books a month and if you crank the price up too much I will do what I can to not be affected by that. I have a book budget and I have to stick to it.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> I don't think anyone would dispute that any given 23,000 story can be immeasurably better than any given 100,000 word novel. That goes without saying.
> 
> Eh...assuming that as an author, you would put the same amount of time and care into writing a 23k word story as you would into writing a 100k word novel, then yes, the 100k novel is going to require more work. You are typing nearly five times as many words. Unless your long novel drags considerably, you're writing more scenes, juggling more plot points, and developing a character over a much longer story. That's just more work.
> 
> Now, of course you may put more work into your 23k word story than Author X puts into his 100k word novel. But that has nothing to do with length--it has to do with who you both are as individual authors.


But this is my point. 23k by writer X may be worth more than 100k by writer Y. I don't suggest that page count is meaningless and shouldn't be paid attention to, but I suspect that we have put sometimes too much weight on it.

If your "book" is a solid experience, if your readers buy it and are not disappointed, then 2.99 is an absolutely fair price. I think that we should have a little confidence in our work, when we feel strongly. Pricing everything we do at .99 and 2.99 doesn't demonstrate confidence. I'm not suggesting that we change 5.99 for everything we do, but at a certain point we have to start using quality and hook as our main selling points and not price.



flanneryohello said:


> When you buy a book, you are buying an experience. Most people wouldn't expect to pay the same amount of money for an experience that lasts two hours as they would for one that lasts eight hours. Maybe the two hour experience is better than the eight hour experience. But given that, all things being equal, the two hour experience cost less to produce than the eight hour experience, charging less for the two hour experience makes some kind of sense.
> 
> I agree with much of this and have said so numerous times on this board. However, I think authors need to understand that nothing frustrates a reader more than expectations that haven't been met. That's why I think it's extremely important that if you choose to charge $2.99 for a short novella, you make it exceptionally clear that a short novella is what the reader is buying. Right or wrong, there are so many full-length indie novels out there for $2.99 and lower, you risk alienating readers who see your price tag and feel ripped off when they realize they just purchased something that's almost a quarter the length of a typical novel.
> 
> ...


At 23,000 words I'm yet to have a single reader or reviewer complain to me that The White Hairs was too short. I suspect that the reason for this is that the story was exactly the length it needed to be to tell the story.

Now, sure there are plenty of authors on this board selling A LOT more copies of their books than I am of The White Hairs, but I suspect that price is not the main reason. I've convinced myself that my pitch is less obviously what people are looking for and hope to grab them with my next book (which has a more aggressive hook).... but that's neither here nor there....


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Arkali said:


> I don't know how much you read a month, but avid readers, at least this one, does not usually think that way. If I spent $10.99 on every book I bought, I'd spend an average of $165 / month on books. Compare that to $5.99 per book - that's $70 a month. I can do a lot with $70. The $2.99 price point is especially nice. Nice enough that I don't think I've bought a traditionally published book in over a month.
> 
> Plain english: You can't compare ONE item at $3 to ONE item at $11 with avid readers. If I only bought one book a month, sure, I wouldn't care about the $5. But I buy MANY books a month and if you crank the price up too much I will do what I can to not be affected by that. I have a book budget and I have to stick to it.


I generally read about 2 books a week. Since I don't have a Kindle, I buy pretty much all of them (even those by my Kindle authors) in paperback, so I guess I spend about $30/week or $120/month-ish.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> I generally read about 2 books a week. Since I don't have a Kindle, I buy pretty much all of them (even those by my Kindle authors) in paperback, so I guess I spend about $30/week or $120/month-ish.


And if you suddenly started buying all of them in hardback, your budget would be chewed up in no time flat. I read a bit more than you - about a book every other day - every three days if they're long or slow reads for whatever reason. I'm just saying that to be fair to your readers you shouldn't think in terms of "It's only $2 or $3. That's no big deal." because no, it's not. It's $30 to $100, probably.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Okay, I did it!

Space Junque is going on sale for 99 cents through November. I just put the change in at Amazon, and it will be up when it's up.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

LKRigel said:


> Okay, I did it!
> 
> Space Junque is going on sale for 99 cents through November. I just put the change in at Amazon, and it will be up when it's up.


Let us know how it goes.

Even more confusing for the reader must be the size of the file. What does 65 KB mean to anyone?


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Let us know how it goes.
> 
> Even more confusing for the reader must be the size of the file. What does 65 KB mean to anyone?


That kills me. Reader here - I have no idea how much that is. I'd be willing to bet that most readers have ZERO clue what the average word-length of a novel is, either. Pages. Most readers deal in pages


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> If your "book" is a solid experience, if your readers buy it and are not disappointed, then 2.99 is an absolutely fair price. I think that we should have a little confidence in our work, when we feel strongly. Pricing everything we do at .99 and 2.99 doesn't demonstrate confidence. I'm not suggesting that we change 5.99 for everything we do, but at a certain point we have to start using quality and hook as our main selling points and not price.


Let me try another comparison. I can buy a new single on iTunes for $1.29. Full-length albums are generally priced anywhere from $7.99 to $14.99. LPs will run you around $5. Price is directly correlated to the number of tracks on the album, the total length. You are paying for an experience.

Might a $1.29 single from Arcade Fire be better than an entire $9.99 album from the Insane Clown Posse? Most definitely. Would I be willing to pay $9.99 for the superior Arcade Fire single? Heck no! Not when every other single out there costs $1.29 or less. Not when I can buy an entire album from another superior band for $9.99.

Art/media/books are not generally priced based on quality. Quality is subjective. Pricing based on quantity, however, is something most people understand and anticipate.

If you can sell many copies of your story at $2.99 and people are satisfied, and expectations are met, then more power to you. This is just my perspective on the issue.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Let us know how it goes.
> 
> Even more confusing for the reader must be the size of the file. What does 65 KB mean to anyone?


You can't really go by the KB size anyway. I've seen some files over 1000KB because images have been included.

I'll let you know. B&N has already changed the price - wow they're fast!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Arkali said:


> That kills me. Reader here - I have no idea how much that is. I'd be willing to bet that most readers have ZERO clue what the average word-length of a novel is, either. Pages. Most readers deal in pages


That's one good reason to have a paperback. The print length is listed.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

Here's my two cents:

I think some of the word count requirements being put forth here are a bit on the heavy side. Taken literally, many of them would banish _Animal Farm_, _Anthem_, _The Old Man and the Sea_, _Things Fall Apart_, _The Great Gatsby_, and _Brave New World_ [among others] from the ranks of novels.

I also think that the proper baseline for comparison is the $9.99 ebook novel. That price point is still pretty standard. If a novel is $9.99, then it's not unreasonable for a shorter novel or novella to be $2.99. Sure, many of us price lower than $9.99 for our work regardless of length, but that's a deliberate competitive choice we're making and it's still an outlier price.

Finally, by creating the two-tiered royalty structure Amazon is sending the clearest message they can that in their eyes, they want the "effective minimum" price in the Kindle Store to be $2.99. They're actively discouraging prices below that by giving you a royalty penalty if you price there. I think that says what they think the low end price for Kindle material should be.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Arkali said:


> And if you suddenly started buying all of them in hardback, your budget would be chewed up in no time flat. I read a bit more than you - about a book every other day - every three days if they're long or slow reads for whatever reason. I'm just saying that to be fair to your readers you shouldn't think in terms of "It's only $2 or $3. That's no big deal." because no, it's not. It's $30 to $100, probably.


Who's talking about hardcover? Although I do buy hardcover books from time to time. 
I think it's great that you read that much! Sincerely, but I don't believe that's average. Most readers of books are spending a lot more than 2.99 per book right now.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> Here's my two cents:
> 
> I think some of the word count requirements being put forth here are a bit on the heavy side. Taken literally, many of them would banish _Animal Farm_, _Anthem_, _The Old Man and the Sea_, _Things Fall Apart_, _The Great Gatsby_, and _Brave New World_ [among others] from the ranks of novels.
> 
> ...


You have two very sensible cents!


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> Let me try another comparison. I can buy a new single on iTunes for $1.29. Full-length albums are generally priced anywhere from $7.99 to $14.99. LPs will run you around $5. Price is directly correlated to the number of tracks on the album, the total length. You are paying for an experience.
> 
> Might a $1.29 single from Arcade Fire be better than an entire $9.99 album from the Insane Clown Posse? Most definitely. Would I be willing to pay $9.99 for the superior Arcade Fire single? Heck no! Not when every other single out there costs $1.29 or less. Not when I can buy an entire album from another superior band for $9.99.
> 
> ...


By your example; we, as independent artists, should be charging the same price (9.99) as corporate artists.
Now, if independent musicians were charging 2.99 for an album, you'd have a point, but they don't. They often charge more than corporately owned artists.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

I agree that 2.99 should be the floor. I already feel I failed a little by going with the 99 cent sale.

But it IS a sale. I did it, and now I'm going to leave it alone till it's over.


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## Jnassise (Mar 22, 2010)

> Taken literally, many of them would banish Animal Farm, Anthem, The Old Man and the Sea, Things Fall Apart, The Great Gatsby, and Brave New World [among others] from the ranks of novels.


Except that at the time they were published, they did fit the accepted length of a novel for that time period.

The figures I quoted were pretty much the standard lengths that any traditional publisher or national writing organization (SFWA, HWA, ITW, RWA, etc) would recognize in today's market. They might have been different twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago, but we're talking about now, not then.


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## JenniferBecton (Oct 21, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> I think some of the word count requirements being put forth here are a bit on the heavy side. Taken literally, many of them would banish _Animal Farm_, _Anthem_, _The Old Man and the Sea_, _Things Fall Apart_, _The Great Gatsby_, and _Brave New World_ [among others] from the ranks of novels.
> 
> I also think that the proper baseline for comparison is the $9.99 ebook novel. That price point is still pretty standard. If a novel is $9.99, then it's not unreasonable for a shorter novel or novella to be $2.99. Sure, many of us price lower than $9.99 for our work regardless of length, but that's a deliberate competitive choice we're making and it's still an outlier price.
> 
> Finally, by creating the two-tiered royalty structure Amazon is sending the clearest message they can that in their eyes, they want the "effective minimum" price in the Kindle Store to be $2.99. They're actively discouraging prices below that by giving you a royalty penalty if you price there. I think that says what they think the low end price for Kindle material should be.


Very well put, tbrookside. I heartily agree with your line of reasoning here.

Also, I think it comes down to honestly presenting our work as what it is and letting the reader decide if they are willing to pay our retail price. I'm not necessarily suggesting adding a word count because that would mean nothing to most people. Most people judge a book by its thickness, and that can't be done with Kindle, obviously. Call it a novel, novella, short story. We can haggle over the exact word count limit til the cows come home, but I think they'll get the general idea of what to expect as long as we're honest. The market--and reviews--will tell us if the price is right.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

I mentioned hardbacks because that's the format I equate to $9.99.  Most books that are available in paperback format are listing for Kindle at $5.99 or $6.99.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> I agree that 2.99 should be the floor. I already feel I failed a little by going with the 99 cent sale.
> 
> But it IS a sale. I did it, and now I'm going to leave it alone till it's over.


Sales have their place!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

tbrookside said:


> Here's my two cents:
> 
> I think some of the word count requirements being put forth here are a bit on the heavy side. Taken literally, many of them would banish _Animal Farm_, _Anthem_, _The Old Man and the Sea_, _Things Fall Apart_, _The Great Gatsby_, and _Brave New World_ [among others] from the ranks of novels.


Those novels were written when that was the standard length. A lot of my old books are pretty short by today's standards. I just pulled Agatha Christie's _Witness for the Prosecution_ off my shelves. Published in 1924, it's 192 pages. Times that by 250 words per page, it comes to 48K words. Since it was a novel then, it's a novel now.

Maybe 15 or more years ago, novels went up to 400 pages on average. I think now we'd have to say 250-300 pages is closer to the average.

That's just my opinion, not scientific fact.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

I honestly don't think that the recent trend to longer books means that if Brave New World were published today it would magically cease to be a novel. One could argue that it might not suite certain tastes or the standards of certain organizations today, but frankly their rules should be bending to Brave New World, and not the other way around.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> I honestly don't think that the recent trend to longer books means that if Brave New World were published today it would magically cease to be a novel. One could argue that it might not suite certain tastes or the standards of certain organizations today, but frankly their rules should be bending to Brave New World, and not the other way around.


Full length sci-fi novels should be at least 48K according to Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Here's another point of view.

Novel over 50,000 
Novella 20,000 to 50,000
Novelette 7,500 to 20,000
Short story 1,000 to 7,500 
Flash fiction or vignette under 1,000


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Novel over 50,000
> Novella 20,000 to 50,000
> Novelette 7,500 to 20,000
> Short story 1,000 to 7,500
> Flash fiction or vignette under 1,000


These numbers are the closest I've seen to a consensus on the issue, although some argue for higher or lower limits.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Full length sci-fi novels should be at least 48K according to Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
> 
> Here's another point of view.
> 
> ...


I don't know how many words Brave New World is, but I assure you it's a novel! 
Otherwise, those seem like reasonable numbers to me.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> I don't know how many words Brave New World is, but I assure you it's a novel!
> Otherwise, those seem like reasonable numbers to me.


According to Amazon, Brave New World is 288 pages.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

oh, gawd, somebody just bought SJ, and the new price hasn't gone through.

Now I feel guilty about THAT.

Does it ever end?

hahahaha


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Hmmm.  To assuage my curiosity, I'm going to start a poll in the book corner.  Will provide a link in a moment if anyone's curious.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Arkali said:


> Hmmm. To assuage my curiosity, I'm going to start a poll in the book corner. Will provide a link in a moment if anyone's curious.


Great. Let's hear from the readers.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> Okay, I did it!
> 
> Space Junque is going on sale for 99 cents through November. I just put the change in at Amazon, and it will be up when it's up.


Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Oh well, I entered the thread too late to talk you out of it. At least it's only a temporary sale and that _could_ be a good idea.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
> 
> Oh well, I entered the thread too late to talk you out of it. At least it's only a temporary sale and that _could_ be a good idea.


Believe me, I feel I've failed some kind of test the gods would create.

I'm justifying it in my mind as a temporary sale to bring in more readers for _Spiderwork_.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Great. Let's hear from the readers.


Just to clarify, I'm only asking about how many books they read. I'd be happy to take the abuse over a pricing thread if people really want to see that, though.

Here's the poll:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,40579.0.html


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Jnassise said:


> Except that at the time they were published, they did fit the accepted length of a novel for that time period.
> 
> The figures I quoted were pretty much the standard lengths that any traditional publisher or national writing organization (SFWA, HWA, ITW, RWA, etc) would recognize in today's market. They might have been different twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ago, but we're talking about now, not then.


Interesting essay on novel length on Wikipedia... it offers no hard word-count requirement and talks about how Snoopy's novel in the PEANUTS comic strip, IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, is less than 100 words in length, but fulfills many of the non-length-related requirements of what a novel ought to embody.

That being said... I wouldn't pay $9.99 or even $2.99 for IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT by Snoopy Brown...


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

Am I having deja vu, but didn't you recently (briefly) lower the price and then raise it again. If not, then I'm having KB dreams!


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

I think it comes down to quality more than length. Last night, I started reading Valmore Daniels' _Forbidden the Stars_ and after 17% (835 locations, roughly 12,500 words) it feels like a high quality work to me, so even if it ended at 25K or 40K words, I'd feel like it was worth the $2.99. At those lengths, as a reader I might write a review that said, "It was great, and my only complaint is that it wasn't longer," but that's really a compliment.

I'd rather spent 3 hours reading something that feels like it's worth my time than 6-9 hours on something that didn't. If the work is satisfying, I don't think indies should worry about $2.99 for novellas.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Monique said:


> Am I having deja vu, but didn't you recently (briefly) lower the price and then raise it again. If not, then I'm having KB dreams!


I did, and then raised it within minutes, so the price change never went through. Can you tell I am completely neurotic on this issue? ha.

But I HAVE changed the price at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Of course, Amazon hasn't gone through yet. But I'm going to leave it at 99 cents through November. Then I'll have to go through gyrations about it again.

Pricing is my bane!


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

I can relate to that, Moses.

Many of Naomi's Kramer's books (MAISY MAY, DEAD(ISH)) are shorter works, but they feel like the right length for the story told... as an example.


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> I can relate to that, Moses.
> 
> Many of Naomi's Kramer's books (MAISY MAY, DEAD(ISH)) are shorter works, but they feel like the right length for the story told... as an example.


Because if you read a satisfying work that's 25-40K words long, then when you're done you're not going to write a review that says:

"I hated this book. It's too damn short."

No, you're going to write a review that says:

"I loved this book. It's too damn short."

And as writers we can live with that.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> By your example; we, as independent artists, should be charging the same price (9.99) as corporate artists.
> Now, if independent musicians were charging 2.99 for an album, you'd have a point, but they don't. They often charge more than corporately owned artists.


Er...no. I wasn't attempting to suggest an ebook pricing structure based on studio album prices. Nor was I saying that indie books should cost the same as traditionally published books.

What I was doing was making a point about a tiered pricing structure that makes no judgment regarding quality (which is subjective), but is based instead on some measure of quantity (which is purely objective). I was also making the point that no matter how good a single/short story might be, most people won't want to pay the equivalent of what you'd buy an album/novel for, relative to general marketplace value. Same holds true with ebooks. Quality (subjective as it is) may play a role in whether someone feels they've gotten their "money's worth", but in general, quantity correlates more directly with price. I may think my 2000 word short story is the most brilliant thing ever written, but I'm not going to get very far by setting its price at $9.99.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

I can't believe I'm already waffling.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> I can't believe I'm already waffling.


You waffler, you!


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

I know it's bad! I guess trad pub authors don't have these traumas to go through, ha.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> Er...no. I wasn't attempting to suggest an ebook pricing structure based on studio album prices. Nor was I saying that indie books should cost the same as traditionally published books.
> 
> What I was doing was making a point about a tiered pricing structure that makes no judgment regarding quality (which is subjective), but is based instead on some measure of quantity (which is purely objective). I was also making the point that no matter how good a single/short story might be, most people won't want to pay the equivalent of what you'd buy an album/novel for, relative to general marketplace value. Same holds true with ebooks. Quality (subjective as it is) may play a role in whether someone feels they've gotten their "money's worth", but in general, quantity correlates more directly with price. I may think my 2000 word short story is the most brilliant thing ever written, but I'm not going to get very far by setting its price at $9.99.


No, of course you weren't saying that. My point was that if you want to use MP3s as our guide, the logic then leads us to indie and corporate artists charging the same. Or did you only want to adopt certain parts of the MP3 model

Not specifically at you:

I was doing some thinking about this issue and you know, it really is a Wal-Mart mentality that wants to buy books for .99 and thinks 2.99 is too much. Obviously at anything under 2.99, the artist is making no money. An artist who makes no money is very unlikely to be able to continue putting out product regularly and at the highest level of quality. They certainly won't have any money to spend on cover art, editing, or marketing!

A .99 ebook yields roughly 34 cents before taxes. A 1.99 ebook is about 70 cents before taxes. A 2.99 a little over $2. 
Selling 1,000 copies at .35 profit each, less taxes, we'll call that $.25: will give you a massive return of $250!

I still say that it is fair for every author to have one product out there at .99. That can be a novel, novella, short-story or whatever - simply on the theory that the first one is always free.

But after that, I don't think any ebook should be less than 2.99. Even 2.98 requires that the author drop from 70% royalties to 35%.

Now, you can debate what SHOULD be published. Maybe every 3,000 word short story shouldn't get individual publication. Maybe stories like that should be saved up and released in collected editions. But if we give our work away long enough, the public will expect it to always be free and then we will NEVER be able to turn this rewarding hobby into our primary occupation.

IMHO.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Arkali said:


> Just to clarify, I'm only asking about how many books they read. I'd be happy to take the abuse over a pricing thread if people really want to see that, though.
> 
> Here's the poll:
> http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,40579.0.html


I thought you were going to do it on the length of books they like to read.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> I think it comes down to quality more than length. Last night, I started reading Valmore Daniels' _Forbidden the Stars_ and after 17% (835 locations, roughly 12,500 words) it feels like a high quality work to me, so even if it ended at 25K or 40K words, I'd feel like it was worth the $2.99. At those lengths, as a reader I might write a review that said, "It was great, and my only complaint is that it wasn't longer," but that's really a compliment.
> 
> I'd rather spent 3 hours reading something that feels like it's worth my time than 6-9 hours on something that didn't. If the work is satisfying, I don't think indies should worry about $2.99 for novellas.


How are you going to know if a book is quality before you read it? You can get the sample which will tell you if something is badly formatted and/or badly written or just not your cuppa tea.

Until you actually read the book, you won't know if the author was able to develop the characters and the story well enough to satisfy you in 10-25 K words.

Reviews are helpful if we can get them, but the only way I think we can get readers to pick up shorter works is price. So, I just thought up a pricing structure for my work which I'll probably agonize over and change 42 times until I finally decide.

Up to 25K $0.99
Up to 50K $1.99
Over 50K 2.99

And I'm sticking to that ... at least for the next ten minutes.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I thought you were going to do it on the length of books they like to read.


Oh, no. Sorry - that thought didn't even occur to me. There WAS a thread a couple of weeks ago, though, about how many people liked shorts. I'll look it up for you, if you like.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Pricing discussion I just started:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,40600.0.html


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

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> snip
> 
> I was doing some thinking about this issue and you know, it really is a Wal-Mart mentality that wants to buy books for .99 and thinks 2.99 is too much. Obviously at anything under 2.99, the artist is making no money. An artist who makes no money is very unlikely to be able to continue putting out product regularly and at the highest level of quality. They certainly won't have any money to spend on cover art, editing, or marketing!
> 
> ...


A few comments: Pricing is what it is. You can say it reflects quality, but good luck defining what that is. For some readers it can simply be a new story they haven't read before, replete with typos. Others will be more demanding.

And that $250 for a thousand sales? That's not so bad in a lot of ways. With a traditional publishing contract, you'd probably get $100-150. And I believe at least one writer on these boards says she's selling more than six times as many copies at $0.99 than she was at $2.99, so she's actually making more.

As a consumer, I tend to have my baseline price for books be $7.99 paperbacks. That's what I consider a fair price for a new book. With ebooks, I expect a significant discount against that price because there's no printing or shipping costs built into the book.

So when I look at an ebook novella, the gears turn in my head and I do the math and think, 'This is maybe one-half but is more likely to be one-third the size of a novel. At $3, that's like paying $6-9 for an ebook novel.' I'm going to be reluctant to do that.

It's not that you can't sell to me at that price, but you are going to have to work harder. I'm more resistant.

And if you sell me a novella without telling me it was a novella, I will resent that. I will feel that you took advantage of my good faith as a reader.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2010)

Can we stop with writing "snip" every time we adjust quotes. It always makes me think of circumcision. We all get that it's ok to adjust quotes to include only the relevant sections, right?

Edit: I really don't care. It just seems weird to me. Carry on however you'd like.


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

foreverjuly said:


> Can we stop with writing "snip" every time we adjust quotes. It always makes me think of circumcision. We all get that it's ok to adjust quotes to include only the relevant sections, right?


I always thought of it as a courtesy of sorts to the poster being quoted, but I can use an ellipsis I suppose, for those of you of sensitive nature.

Thing is, when you remove part of a quote, you are in danger of removing context. That's why I think it's important to indicate that some text has been removed. Then a reader can always go back to the source if so inclined.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Mark,

I tend (personally) not to use ellipses or "snip" just because I want to focus in on what I'm responding to, and as for losing context, the full post is always available a few posts above my replies, so I tend not to worry about it. But we all have our own approaches, no big deal. 

As to your comments on pricing, I understand your perspective as a consumer. I tend to be a bargain-hunter myself when I'm in consumer mode.

However, I think we tend to lose a bit of perspective, both as writers and consumers, when it comes to price because the economy's so tough right now. I agree that the standard paperback price is ~$7.99 right now and a lower price for a novel is justified when in eBook format. I doubt anyone will argue that point with you here in these forums.

Most of us lead off a series with $0.99 to introduce our work to the marketplace, then use $2.99 thereafter. That is a significant discount.

Personally, I'm anxious to see what guidelines Amazon will encourage on shorter works with their Kindle Singles program. Most of us will probably fall in line behind that.

But I would like to point out that it might be stating things a bit strongly to suggest that if a very well-written novel comes up a few thousand words short - like 45,000 instead on 50,000 words - that it's not worth a price like $2.99.

I mean, let's be realistic in comparative pricing. A gallon of gas costs close to $2.99 right now. Depending on what you drive, that could get you 20-50 miles. Less than an hour's worth of return on investment. A movie ticket runs $8.50 to maybe $12.00, with maybe a $6.00 matinee... and gives you 85 minutes to three hours of entertainment. People pay $30-$40 for UFC/WWE/TNA pay-per-view events that last 2-3 hours.

By comparison, even a short novel lasts quite a bit longer than all those far more costly experiences... so to complain about $2.99 because of, say, 5,000 words one way or another? It kind of insults the value of the time and effort writers put into their work.

I paid $2.99 for Victorine's novel NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS before it reduced in price to $0.99 and felt I would have been willing to pay more. Same with L.J. Sellers' THE SEX CLUB (also $2.99 when I bought it and now $0.99). I'd be willing to pay more for future work from either of those authors... as much as $3.99 or even $4.99.

Then there have been novels I didn't enjoy, no matter how long they were, where I would have been bothered by any price paid. So it ought not just be about length, but about value and quality of the entertainment provided. And that's a different discussion, I think.

P.S. With a $2.99 pricing model, that rolls us back to where paperback prices were around 1980. That's a 30-year price rollback. Seems pretty fair to me, and hard for anyone to argue that it's not a value price. And if a novel is terrible, personally I wouldn't care if it were 200,000 words and free... I'd be wanting that time out of my life back... and of course, I probably wouldn't finish it.


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## altworld (Mar 11, 2010)

Interesting read, here are its effects on me.

I've rolled back the price of The Tether: None Good (67K) from $3.99 to $2.99 across all formats, accept print where I've made the hard copy as cheap as I could at $8.99 without having to directly pay CS money per copy they sell. I feel these prices are as low as I can go and still be able to maintain a viable special promotion or giveaway from time to time.

Just to note The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was less than a 50K in length and that never distracted from the story, or placed the book firmly into the YA catagory.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

altworld said:


> Just to note The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was less than a 50K in length and that never distracted from the story, or placed the book firmly into the YA catagory.


True, and a good illustration about entertainment value versus length alone.

I'm not sure, but I think most, if not all, of the Hitchhikers books by Douglas Adams were under 50K. Maybe Mostly Harmless was a bit longer.

I'm relatively sure LONG DARK TEA-TIME OF THE SOUL and DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENDY were both over 50K, but that was hardly Adams' best work...


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## MosesSiregarIII (Jul 15, 2010)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> How are you going to know if a book is quality before you read it? You can get the sample which will tell you if something is badly formatted and/or badly written or just not your cuppa tea.
> 
> Until you actually read the book, you won't know if the author was able to develop the characters and the story well enough to satisfy you in 10-25 K words.


I'm pretty picky, so I can tell a lot from a sample. It's true that you don't know how well the story will hold up over the course of the work, but that's how it goes. You have to read something to know how much you'll like it, just as always.

My opinion, though, is that a well-written, good quality novella will not anger readers at $2.99. A good description, cover, sample, and maybe reviews, should be enough to sell a novella at $2.99.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

MosesSiregarIII said:


> I'm pretty picky, so I can tell a lot from a sample. It's true that you don't know how well the story will hold up over the course of the work, but that's how it goes. You have to read something to know how much you'll like it, just as always.
> 
> My opinion, though, is that a well-written, good quality novella will not anger readers at $2.99. A good description, cover, sample, and maybe reviews, should be enough to sell a novella at $2.99.


Quality of the experience being the key, yes. The down economy makes us all a bit impatient on price, but if something's a good read, no one cares if it was $2.99 or $0.99 or $3.99. If something's a bad read, they care no matter how little they paid.

I'm a bit like you, though, Moses... I download a sample and can tell from that whether I'll read the whole thing (or want to).

I'd never review a book based on the sample alone... but unlike covers, you can judge a book by its sample.


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## keithdbz (May 19, 2010)

Though the Amazon description doesn't say Novella for Behind The Stained Glass, when I talk about it, that's what I call it and so far, no one has had a problem with the price being $2.99 for the e-book.

The price is the price and adjustments can always be made, that's the beauty of this system.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> According to Amazon, Brave New World is 288 pages.


It appears to be around 66k words.

There were people on this thread saying anything under 70k wasn't a novel. Some people even were demanding 100k as an average.


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

CraigInTwinCities said:


> Quality of the experience being the key, yes. The down economy makes us all a bit impatient on price, but if something's a good read, no one cares if it was $2.99 or $0.99 or $3.99. If something's a bad read, they care no matter how little they paid.
> 
> I'm a bit like you, though, Moses... I download a sample and can tell from that whether I'll read the whole thing (or want to).
> 
> I'd never review a book based on the sample alone... but unlike covers, you can judge a book by its sample.


I feel differently. If I pay $3 for a book and I'm done with it in a couple of hours, that feels a bit pricey to me. I may enjoy it a great deal, but I'm apt to be more careful next time I'm shopping for a book. After all, with plenty of 80,000 word novels out there for $2.99, why not just find a good $3 novel? Or if I want a novella, why not search for the $0.99 novellas first?


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## keithdbz (May 19, 2010)

"After all, with plenty of 80,000 word novels out there for $2.99,"

Why pay anything at all and download one of the countless public domain works? Because if a synopsis resonates with you, piques your curiosity, you will.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> No, of course you weren't saying that. My point was that if you want to use MP3s as our guide, the logic then leads us to indie and corporate artists charging the same. Or did you only want to adopt certain parts of the MP3 model


With all due respect, it feels like you're trying exceptionally hard to misunderstand and misconstrue what I'm saying. lol. Oh well.



> I was doing some thinking about this issue and you know, it really is a Wal-Mart mentality that wants to buy books for .99 and thinks 2.99 is too much. Obviously at anything under 2.99, the artist is making no money. An artist who makes no money is very unlikely to be able to continue putting out product regularly and at the highest level of quality. They certainly won't have any money to spend on cover art, editing, or marketing!
> 
> A .99 ebook yields roughly 34 cents before taxes. A 1.99 ebook is about 70 cents before taxes. A 2.99 a little over $2.
> Selling 1,000 copies at .35 profit each, less taxes, we'll call that $.25: will give you a massive return of $250!
> ...


You and I agree more than we disagree about the pricing issue. If you look at my past posts on KB, you'll find that I argue very strongly that ebook novels should never be priced below $2.99. I'd rather see an average price of $3.99 to $4.99. I do feel that most indie ebooks shouldn't cost as much or more than traditionally published ebooks, because there are lower fixed costs, and also, let's face it, indie authors tend not to invest nearly as much money into producing the book (cover design, editing, marketing, etc.) Also, indie authors would be foolish not to take advantage of the ability to offer their work at a discount.

I'm not saying that $2.99 is too much to pay for a short novella--assuming that book is being offered for sale in a vacuum. What I _am_ saying is that any author pricing their work needs to evaluate the market and price accordingly. Unfortunately, that makes $2.99 for between 20-25k words a tougher sell. I know I'm not the only person with that opinion--not even the only person in this thread.

Thing is, a story that length would never get published traditionally unless it was bundled with other novellas. That's not to say there's no market for shorter work, but it does mean that most readers aren't used to shopping for "books" quite that short. If you price a 23k word story the same as most other full-length novels are priced, and you aren't exceedingly clear in your product description that the work is one-third the length of short novel, you run the risk of making people feel misled and/or ripped off. Again, I'm not the only one who feels that way.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

flanneryohello said:


> I'm not saying that $2.99 is too much to pay for a short novella--assuming that book is being offered for sale in a vacuum.
> 
> If you price a 23k word story the same as most other full-length novels are priced, and you aren't exceedingly clear in your product description that the work is one-third the length of short novel, you run the risk of making people feel misled and/or ripped off. Again, I'm not the only one who feels that way.


I think the misunderstanding is arising in part because of the conflict between these two statements.

If it's not too much to pay, then it seems a bit strong to say that people are being misled and ripped off.

People who have a print edition are covered because the print page count appears on the product page even for the Kindle edition. So for those books, there shouldn't be any issue with the customer not having the proper expectations. For Kindle-only works, it's a bit more dicey - there's no automatic way for a page count or word count to show on the product page, and Amazon doesn't ask for the information during the upload process. It would probably be a good idea to include the information in the product description section, but I'm not sure if I'd expect authors not reading this thread to know that.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> I feel differently. If I pay $3 for a book and I'm done with it in a couple of hours, that feels a bit pricey to me. I may enjoy it a great deal, but I'm apt to be more careful next time I'm shopping for a book. After all, with plenty of 80,000 word novels out there for $2.99, why not just find a good $3 novel? Or if I want a novella, why not search for the $0.99 novellas first?


Mark,

I consider 50,000 words to be around where a full-length novel begins to be considered a full-length novel. I have many paperback mysteries I've read of approximately this length (just under or around 200 pages). I've never felt cheated... and I've never finished in "a couple hours." Maybe if you're a speed-reader, but where's the enjoyment in that?

Shorter works that are longer than short stories (10K-30K words, by Amazon's definition of what will qualify as a Kindle Single) are another story. Those I'll wait for Amazon's lead on, in terms of what sort of price to charge. We'll see what they incentivize. If it's $0.50 to $1.50, so be it. We won't know until more details are announced.

But as I said in my post, something close to novel length (45K words for example) ought not be looked down on for the sake of being short by 5,000 words. That seems a bit extreme. Look at Douglas Adams novels, most of which were VERY short and sold for ~$3.99 to $4.50 in paperback in the mid-80s and early 90s.

Again, $2.99 for novel-length is a ~30-year rollback in prices. Not many should find reason to complain, if it's a good read.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> Thing is, a story that length would never get published traditionally unless it was bundled with other novellas.


Are you sure you want to stand by this comment? Because now I am convinced you don't know what you're talking about. I mean that literally; not as a slam.

Maybe you should qualify what genre you're speaking of.

In my genre, romance -- one of the highest selling genres in today's market -- novellas are big sellers, and they are priced generally between 3.50 and 4.50.

Also, I just took a look at the top 100 sellers at Amazon. One book is priced at 99 cents and only a handful more are under $4.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I think the problem is not the length of the work, it's that we're getting very used to free and 99 cent books. When you're used to that, even $2.99 doesn't look like such a bargain.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> I think the misunderstanding is arising in part because of the conflict between these two statements.
> 
> If it's not too much to pay, then it seems a bit strong to say that people are being misled and ripped off.


I said that $2.99 isn't too much to pay if you're selling the work in a vacuum (essentially, if you're not selling it alongside scads of $0.99 - $2.99 full-length novels of 50k words and up). If the average price of an ebook novel was closer to $5.99 - $9.99, $2.99 would be reasonable for a story of 23k words.

That's not the market that exists. I'm not placing a value judgment on whether that's right or wrong--just recognizing reality.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> For Kindle-only works, it's a bit more dicey - there's no automatic way for a page count or word count to show on the product page, and Amazon doesn't ask for the information during the upload process. It would probably be a good idea to include the information in the product description section, but I'm not sure if I'd expect authors not reading this thread to know that.


Not automatically, sure, but a printed page (hardcover or paperback) is approximately 285-320 words on average. People seem to think 50,000 words is too short, even though NaNoWriMo counts it as their minimum... but that translates out to around 175-200 pages... which I have plenty of, in paperback, sold as novels. Of course, considering New York pads page counts on paperbacks with front matter, puffed text, chapters that only include text on a third of the page at chapter starts, and ads for other books in the back, most people end up seeing 175-200-page mysteries as being 190-225-page books... Usually on Kindle, one can avoid such "puff" content. But they are the same length.

Personally, as long as a story doesn't feel rushed or padded, whether it runs 45,000 words, 50,000 words or 75,000 words means little to me.

And you know, as much as I've enjoyed some of Stephen King's super-long works, like his recent UNDER THE DOME, which was around 322,000 words, and which was impressive and epic; but CARRIE was only 75,000 words and in many ways just as enjoyable, if not moreso.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> Are you sure you want to stand by this comment? Because now I am convinced you don't know what you're talking about. I mean that literally; not as a slam.
> 
> Maybe you should qualify what genre you're speaking of.
> 
> ...


I should have been clearer that I was talking about traditionally published *print* books. Yes, ebooks have created a real market for shorter fiction, which is awesome for those of us who enjoying writing novellas (as I do). But that's a relatively new development. My point is that readers who are still transitioning into this whole ebook thing aren't used to the idea that the book they've just purchased might be one-third the length of a novel. With print books length is immediately apparent. If an author isn't very careful to make the length of their ebook crystal clear (ideally through price AND product description), they run the risk of disappointing the reader.

If you go to Samhain or another publisher who offers short fiction, the books are clearly labeled as novellas. And priced accordingly relative to the longer novels. Which is my point exactly.

By the way, my genre is romance as well. I know what I'm talking about.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

If you're talking about print, it's not useful to me. I know that sounds argumentative, and I don't mean it that way.

I am truly struggling with price. I believe it's dangerous to drive the price down. I already regret changing to 99 cents, and I'm only going to let the sale run through Halloween (and Amazon still hasn't changed it; argh they take so long, ha).

Why did you say novellas are bundled together, etc., when novella sales are so big right now? Unless you're coming from a traditional romance perspective and not the ebook phenom, which would explain it.


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## tbrookside (Nov 4, 2009)

> If the average price of an ebook novel was closer to $5.99 - $9.99, $2.99 would be reasonable for a story of 23k words.


Hey, that's reasonable.

It's partially a perception issue, then.

To me, it seems like the average price of an ebook novel _is_ $5.99 to $9.99 - or even higher. You're perceiving a lower average price to start with, so you discount what constitutes an acceptable price to a lower level than I would.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy = 180 pp = ~54,000 words
Restaurant at the End of the Universe = 208 pp = ~62,400 words
Life, the Universe and Everythin = 160 pp = ~48,000 words
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish = 224 pp = ~ 67,200 words
Mostly Harmless = 240 pp = ~ 72,000 words

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency = 306 pp = ~91,800 words
Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul = 320 pp = ~96,000 words

The Color Purple = ~66,500 words
Fahrenheit 451 = ~45,000 words
Slaughterhouse Five = ~49,000 words
As I Lay Dying = ~56,000 words
Lord of the Flies = ~60,000 words
The Hours = ~54,000 words
The Taquilla Worm = ~43,000 words


*using 300-word page averages


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

LKRigel said:


> Are you sure you want to stand by this comment? Because now I am convinced you don't know what you're talking about. I mean that literally; not as a slam.
> 
> Maybe you should qualify what genre you're speaking of.
> 
> ...


Most of the bestsellers are from traditional publishers, meaning they get a bigger push, have tons more visibility because they are everywhere in print format, and are often by well-known authors. I don't think the Amazon Kindle bestseller list is a commentary on price as much as it is a commentary on how well traditionally published books sell as ebooks vs. how well indie published ebooks sell.

I suppose I'm not all that aware of novellas either. Do they actually sell these in the bookstores, or are you talking about ebook sales only? I recall only a few novellas ever being sold as standalone titles in bookstores.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> Hey, that's reasonable.
> 
> It's partially a perception issue, then.
> 
> To me, it seems like the average price of an ebook novel _is_ $5.99 to $9.99 - or even higher. You're perceiving a lower average price to start with, so you discount what constitutes an acceptable price to a lower level than I would.


Exactly.


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

tbrookside said:


> Hey, that's reasonable.
> 
> It's partially a perception issue, then.
> 
> To me, it seems like the average price of an ebook novel _is_ $5.99 to $9.99 - or even higher. You're perceiving a lower average price to start with, so you discount what constitutes an acceptable price to a lower level than I would.


It's always perception. We have fixed in our minds already different values for hardbacks, trade, and mass market paperbacks, all of the same work. And now ebooks, which in my mind should be substantially cheaper than mass market paperback. And also fixed in my mind is the idea of novel vs. novella vs. short story, and I assign different values to those lengths too.

And finally, yeah, I guess I assign a different value to self-published books vs. books from traditional publishers. I expect the former to be less expensive because it's my belief that those are less expensive to create, even if the author is paying some of the upfront costs.

So all these thoughts tumble through my head when I'm evaluating something for potential purchase. Is this a fair price for this, I ask myself?


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> I suppose I'm not all that aware of novellas either. Do they actually sell these in the bookstores, or are you talking about ebook sales only? I recall only a few novellas ever being sold as standalone titles in bookstores.


Sure...

Stephen King's DIFFERENT SEASONS collection has four stories in it, all of novella length.

Of those, The Body (under the film title STAND BY ME), Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (under the film title THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION) and Apt Pupil were all eventually published outside of DIFFERENT SEASONS in paperback editions. At full paperback prices for that time, at the time of the movie releases for those three.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> A few comments: Pricing is what it is. You can say it reflects quality, but good luck defining what that is. For some readers it can simply be a new story they haven't read before, replete with typos. Others will be more demanding.
> 
> And that $250 for a thousand sales? That's not so bad in a lot of ways. With a traditional publishing contract, you'd probably get $100-150. And I believe at least one writer on these boards says she's selling more than six times as many copies at $0.99 than she was at $2.99, so she's actually making more.
> 
> ...


Most independent books will never sell 1,000 copies.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> If you're talking about print, it's not useful to me. I know that sounds argumentative, and I don't mean it that way.
> 
> I am truly struggling with price. I believe it's dangerous to drive the price down. I already regret changing to 99 cents, and I'm only going to let the sale run through Halloween (and Amazon still hasn't changed it; argh they take so long, ha).
> 
> Why did you say novellas are bundled together, etc., when novella sales are so big right now? Unless you're coming from a traditional romance perspective and not the ebook phenom, which would explain it.


Well, I wasn't suggesting that you use print novels as a basis for pricing or anything else. My post was about reader expectations and price. I was making the point that because most readers who come from a background of buying traditionally published *print* books aren't used to shopping for novellas, many of them may not realize that's what they're buying if the price and description doesn't make it exceptionally clear.

Look, if you were published by Samhain and your novella was on their website alongside all their other novellas, priced relative to the rest of their books (based on length), all would be wonderful. Readers who want a Samhain novella go to their website and intentionally buy one. But you're selling your book on Amazon. You are not in the Samhain sandbox. You are not competing directly with their books. You are in the Amazon Kindle sandbox. And within that sandbox, there have unfortunately been certain expectations created by indie authors who have chosen to undervalue their work. Within that Amazon Kindle sandbox, your $2.99 short novella could easily be mistaken for a full-length novel, since _many, many_ full-length Kindle novels are priced at $2.99 and lower.

You and I contributed to another pricing thread at the same time--not sure if you remember my opinions or not, but I helped convince you not to price at $0.99 (I was arguing against the $0.99 price point for indie novels in general, which seemed to sway your opinion). I didn't realize your story was a short novella. But please take me at my word when I say that I agree wholeheartedly that driving the Kindle book market into the basement is a terrible idea. I'm happy to have you lead the charge against it.  My comments are more about bowing to and recognizing reality. Whether we like it or not, the indie ebook market carries certain pricing expectations. Violate those expectations and you'll likely have a harder time. That's all I'm saying. It's your right to price however you like, and if you're pleased with your sales, that's all that's important.

As for the novellas bundled together comment, _again_, I was talking about traditionally published print books. In that world, you really only see novellas in Stephen King-type collections. When's the last time you went to the bookstore and found a 26k word novella on the shelf?

Yes, ebooks have created a market for novellas. Hooray! But as I've stated before, I was explicitly talking about print books.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Most writers who frequent these boards tend to include approximate word counts in their book blurbs on Amazon.


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

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> Most independent books will never sell 1,000 copies.


Then why even worry about pricing? What you're saying is that it doesn't matter. If you're trying to make a living wage from writing and your books won't even sell a thousand copies, it really doesn't matter all that much if they are priced at $0.99 or $2.99 or even higher. You're at the community theater level. You're doing it for the love of doing it.


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Let's imagine a writer who writes a good little book, spends several months online doing everything he can to promote it and finally squeaks his way to having sold 1,000 books at 2.99 a pop. He's just made a pre-tax $2,000 for several months of work. ($1400 after taxes?)

No, he can't live off of it, but that $1,400 would be enough for him to then give the next book professional editing, a professional level cover, market the thing a little, and maybe have a nice celebratory dinner. This gives him a shot at selling more next time.

If he does all of that work and ends up with only $250, then none of that is possible. He's discouraged.

This is why I say it's a Wal-Mart mentality. At .99 you are demanding that the product be produced at a price which is not sustainable.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

flanneryohello said:


> You and I contributed to another pricing thread at the same time--not sure if you remember my opinions or not, but I helped convince you not to price at $0.99 (I was arguing against the $0.99 price point for indie novels in general, which seemed to sway your opinion). I didn't realize your story was a short novella. But please take me at my word when I say that I agree wholeheartedly that driving the Kindle book market into the basement is a terrible idea. I'm happy to have you lead the charge against it.  My comments are more about bowing to and recognizing reality. Whether we like it or not, the indie ebook market carries certain pricing expectations. Violate those expectations and you'll likely have a harder time. That's all I'm saying. It's your right to price however you like, and if you're pleased with your sales, that's all that's important.


I remember this. I think we're closer in viewpoint than this discussion would seem to show.


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## Guest (Oct 26, 2010)

I'd rather sell a thousand copies than sell fewer at 2.99. Having that many people out there with your book is better promotion than you're going to get using the extra money to promote the next one.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> He's just made a pre-tax $2,000 for several months of work. ($1400 after taxes?)


Closer to $1,100... self-employment tax penalty on FICA, remember...


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> I'd rather sell a thousand copies than sell fewer at 2.99. Having that many people out there with your book is better promotion than you're going to get using the extra money to promote the next one.


That's true. If we have to go either/or.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

tbrookside said:


> Hey, that's reasonable.
> 
> It's partially a perception issue, then.
> 
> To me, it seems like the average price of an ebook novel _is_ $5.99 to $9.99 - or even higher. You're perceiving a lower average price to start with, so you discount what constitutes an acceptable price to a lower level than I would.


It's completely a perception issue.

In my experience $5.99 to $9.99 is the typical price range for traditionally published ebooks. The independently published ebook market is skewed _much_ lower, closer to $0.99 to $3.99 on average.

If an indie author wants to try and compete directly with traditional publishers by using their pricing model, that's their decision. Many readers feel that $9.99 is too expensive for even a traditionally published bestseller. They're aware that ebooks take less money to produce, so the expectation is that they should cost less than a mass market paperback. There is thread upon thread at Amazon devoted to the topic.

When you're selling indie ebooks, you're targeting two major markets: people who buy ebooks, and/or people who are interested in independently published fiction. People who buy ebooks already generally feel that ebook prices from traditional publishers are overinflated. They're savvy and realize that there are costs associated with printing books that go away when you publish digitally. They expect that the reduction in cost will also result in a reduction of price. People who are interested in independently published fiction are considering your book against a whole market full of other independently published books. If you can pique interest with your sample, reviews, price, etc., you can potentially win over any reader who wants to read your story badly enough. But if your work is priced much higher than most other independently published books, carrying all the perceived risks of an indie book (lack of editing, etc.), you may have a tougher sell. Similarly, if you're selling short fiction (which is a smaller market) at the same price as most others sell full-length novels, that's another marketing challenge to overcome.

None of this is to say you can't sell books at whatever price you set (within reason). I just think that by going against the market (by skewing higher-priced), you're introducing challenges that you may not have the promotional power to overcome.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

foreverjuly said:


> I'd rather sell a thousand copies than sell fewer at 2.99. Having that many people out there with your book is better promotion than you're going to get using the extra money to promote the next one.


I'm starting to believe this. The problem is there are good arguments on both sides.

Anyway Jason, the price just went through on Amazon. If you want Space Junque for 99 cents, get it now!


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> Closer to $1,100... self-employment tax penalty on FICA, remember...


I guess I'll find out!


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

LKRigel said:


> I'm starting to believe this. The problem is there are good arguments on both sides.
> 
> Anyway Jason, the price just went through on Amazon. If you want Space Junque for 99 cents, get it now!


Let us know what happens to your sales!


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

NoahMullette-Gillman said:


> Let us know what happens to your sales!


I will. I don't have any promo lined up until the Book of the Day on Nov 8. However, I am supposed to be getting a review at The Romance Reviews sometime soon, and Paula emailed that she would list Space Junque in either October or November, so that might skew things.


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

I couldn't agree more that pricing as a perception issue. It's my strong belief that no novel (or even novella) of good quality should be offered for sale as low as 99 cents. The only reason 2.99 is anywhere near acceptable is because of the current 70% royalty rate being comparable to what traditionally published authors get for print books. If that ever changes, prices should rise to compensate it. 

It's unfortunate that many customers are not willing to pay more than $3 for a book that gives then several hours (maybe even days) of enjoyment, yet they're more than happy to spend $3 on a coffee or an energy drink that will be gone in ten minutes. These are luxury items too, just like books. When you really put it into perspective, which product do you get more enjoyment out of?


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## altworld (Mar 11, 2010)

CraigInTwinCities said:


> Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy = 180 pp = ~54,000 words
> Restaurant at the End of the Universe = 208 pp = ~62,400 words
> Life, the Universe and Everythin = 160 pp = ~48,000 words
> So Long and Thanks for All the Fish = 224 pp = ~ 67,200 words
> ...


I think the average is about 250 words for a page, however it seems the Hitchhikers series all seemed to be concise written pieces. I certainly found the Hitchhiker books a better read than the Dick Gently books that seemed to ramble more, although contained some wonderful organic descriptions.

Fahrenheit 451 only 45000 words? Felt longer and a little more terrifying than that.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

NickFox said:


> I couldn't agree more that pricing as a perception issue. It's my strong belief that no novel (or even novella) of good quality should be offered for sale as low as 99 cents. The only reason 2.99 is anywhere near acceptable is because of the current 70% royalty rate being comparable to what traditionally published authors get for print books. If that ever changes, prices should rise to compensate it.
> 
> It's unfortunate that many customers are not willing to pay more than $3 for a book that gives then several hours (maybe even days) of enjoyment, yet they're more than happy to spend $3 on a coffee or an energy drink that will be gone in ten minutes. These are luxury items too, just like books. When you really put it into perspective, which product do you get more enjoyment out of?


Obviously many people are willing to pay much more than $3 on a book, just look at the Kindle best sellers. Most of them are higher than $3. So, people are *willing* to pay more for a book they really want.

I don't know why people think it's wrong to sell a full length novel for $.99. You can go check out plenty of full length novels at the library for free. Indie authors give away their books to libraries so their work can be checked out and read.... for free. That doesn't mean that people expect to go to a book store and get free novels just because they can check out free books at the library.

So, I bought 50 ebooks for 99 cents. That doesn't mean I expect the next Stephen King book to be 99 cents. I don't think selling a book for 99 cents is destroying any kind of perception. It does help people take a chance on an unknown author.

Just my two cents. 

Vicki


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## ReeseReed (Dec 5, 2009)

flanneryohello said:


> As for the novellas bundled together comment, _again_, I was talking about traditionally published print books. In that world, you really only see novellas in Stephen King-type collections. When's the last time you went to the bookstore and found a 26k word novella on the shelf?
> 
> Yes, ebooks have created a market for novellas. Hooray! But as I've stated before, I was explicitly talking about print books.


The Shack, by William P. Young is a short book (I don't know the word count, but print length is 272 pages), and it's been hugely successful. (At least down here in the Bible belt.)


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

_*When's the last time you went to the bookstore and found a 26k word novella on the shelf?*_

Not too long ago, I purchased a few copies of Flatland to give to a few friends.


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

NickFox said:


> I couldn't agree more that pricing as a perception issue. It's my strong belief that no novel (or even novella) of good quality should be offered for sale as low as 99 cents. The only reason 2.99 is anywhere near acceptable is because of the current 70% royalty rate being comparable to what traditionally published authors get for print books. If that ever changes, prices should rise to compensate it.
> 
> It's unfortunate that many customers are not willing to pay more than $3 for a book that gives then several hours (maybe even days) of enjoyment, yet they're more than happy to spend $3 on a coffee or an energy drink that will be gone in ten minutes. These are luxury items too, just like books. When you really put it into perspective, which product do you get more enjoyment out of?


What does a $0.99 price have to do with quality? Answer: Nothing whatsoever.

And the $2.99 price actually pays writers about twice as much per sale as they'd get from a traditional publishing agreement for $7.99 paperbacks. So why is that a barely acceptable price?

What you're seeing are market forces at work. The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, so the price can drop almost to the floor. If $2.99 is the minimum for the 70% royalty, the majority of indie books will be priced, at $2.99 (or below). You have indie authors who have no name recognition and very little visibility and tiny or non-existent marketing budgets. Being cheaper than the other guy is one of their most potent sales strategies.


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## 13893 (Apr 29, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> <snip>The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, <snip>


See, now you're losing your credibility...


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

Victorine said:


> Obviously many people are willing to pay much more than $3 on a book, just look at the Kindle best sellers. Most of them are higher than $3. So, people are *willing* to pay more for a book they really want.
> 
> I don't know why people think it's wrong to sell a full length novel for $.99. You can go check out plenty of full length novels at the library for free. Indie authors give away their books to libraries so their work can be checked out and read.... for free. That doesn't mean that people expect to go to a book store and get free novels just because they can check out free books at the library.
> 
> ...


Of course it's not wrong to sell an ebook for $0.99. What you're seeing is irritation on the part of writers who don't like to see their prices undercut. Their argument is something like this: "If you sell your book at $0.99, and enough other indie writers sell at $0.99, then it will be harder for me to sell my books at a higher price. I don't like that!"

Here's the elephant in the room no one wants to mention: Price may matter more than quality when it comes to indie writers.


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> What you're seeing are market forces at work. The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, so the price can drop almost to the floor.


I suppose this is true for a bare minimum "product" - ie. if ALL labor is sweat equity. If the "author" (using the term loosely) pounds out a "novel" in a week, or even a month, uploads it to Amazon and calls it done, then yeah. Minimum outlay of cash. If, on the other hand, you expect a decent looking cover or, god forbid, editing, well, then. That costs. I suppose one could argue that the cover doesn't necessarily benefit the reader, but editing sure does.

Personally, I like pretty covers


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## NoahMullette-Gillman (Jul 29, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero,


This is the most incorrect statement I've read in MONTHS!

Books don't write themselves, or edit themselves, or draw their own covers, or market themselves.


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

ReeseReed said:


> The Shack, by William P. Young is a short book (I don't know the word count, but print length is 272 pages), and it's been hugely successful. (At least down here in the Bible belt.)


The standard number of words in a printed page is accepted to be 250. So for a 272 page book, we're talking roughly 68,000 words. Which is a pretty average-sized novel. I'm talking about short novellas, i.e. 26k words.

Also, The Shack was self-published.


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## Victorine (Apr 23, 2010)

Well, I will come to the defense of Mark and agree with him.  Look at it this way.  If you spend $200 on a cover, and $500 on editing, your cost for producing that book (besides the sweat equity) is $700.  But you can sell the book forever.  So as time goes by, your cost per book goes down.

If you sell 10,000 copies, your cost per book is $.07 per book.  If you keep selling the book, you might sell 100,000 copies.  Your cost just went down to $.007 per book.

Mark said your cost is essential zero.  I think $.007 per book is essentially zero.

Vicki


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## flanneryohello (May 11, 2010)

Monique said:


> _*When's the last time you went to the bookstore and found a 26k word novella on the shelf?*_
> 
> Not too long ago, I purchased a few copies of Flatland to give to a few friends.


Flatland was written in 1884! It's a classic and so obviously still in print, but I'm trying to make a point about the modern print market. Yes, you can probably pull out a few examples of short, short novellas that have been published over the past 130 years. Does anyone here really think that there's a thriving print novella market? I haven't seen it. Especially for new or unknown authors.


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## Monique (Jul 31, 2010)

I was just being sassy. The print novella market is itty-bitty.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

altworld said:


> I think the average is about 250 words for a page, however it seems the Hitchhikers series all seemed to be concise written pieces. I certainly found the Hitchhiker books a better read than the Dick Gently books that seemed to ramble more, although contained some wonderful organic descriptions.
> 
> Fahrenheit 451 only 45000 words? Felt longer and a little more terrifying than that.


You might be right on 250 instead of 300. Depends on a number of layout factors. I noticed, looking at Adams' books, that the UK page counts were noticeably lower than the US page counts, so apparently they pack words in tighter on the page over there.

Yeah, Fahrenheit 451 surprised me with its brevity... Very effective given its length, and I find it hard to believe anyone could ever say they felt shortchanged by it, despite being 5,000 words short of 50,000...

But hey... it reminds me of when I used to review videogames. I'd write something like, "this game lasts ~15 hours of play" and someone would inevitably drop me an email to the effect of, "U SUX, I BETE IT IN 8 HOURS #(*-WIPE!"

To which I always thought, "Huh. So you probably skipped all the cutscenes and missed most of the story... I got 50 percent more entertainment out of it than you... and you think it's something to brag about?"

Heh...


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, so the price can drop almost to the floor ... You have indie authors who have no name recognition and very little visibility and tiny or non-existent marketing budgets. Being cheaper than the other guy is one of their most potent sales strategies.


Mark,

You might want to be a bit more informed before making claims like this; you undermine your credibility.

There are some not-insignificant costs to being ePublished. It's not as simple as loading a Word document up to Amazon DTP and waiting for the moolah to roll in, although that is the public perception. At least not if an author wants to "do it right" and present their eBook professionally.

I'll give you a bargain-basement cost estimate, and then a more average cost-estimate, and assuming no CreateSpace print edition:

BARGAIN BASEMENT eBOOK COSTS for a 250-page (75,000-word) eNovel:
Copy-editing @ $1/page ... cheapest rate going: $250.00
Web site hosting ... Free blogspot domain: FREE
Book Cover (Ronnell D. Porter) ... $50.00
Review copies for reviewers ... just send them .mobi files ... FREE
KB Book of the Day ... one day only ... $35.00
Other promotional efforts ... skip 'em, too spendy ... FREE
Soliciting reviews and self-promoting ... Twitter, Facebook, etc. ... FREE
TOTAL COSTS: $335.00

Now, at $2.99, the royalty from Amazon is $2.09. So one would have to sell 160 copies just to break even. Terrible? No. But not exactly free, either.

At $0.99, the royalty rate from Amazon is about $0.35/copy. So one would have to sell 957 copies just to break even... and as Noah pointed out, this is a difficult number to achieve, esp. for a first-time novelist. Especially with such minimal promotional effort.

And with such a minimal effort and so little money put into promotion, getting to 160 sales could be an up-hill battle. So unless you're in an ultra-popular genre and have some name recognition in terms of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, it could take months to get even that far.

Now, here's a more aggressive and responsible approach and set of costs... something that a Kindle author with a couple novels (and modest sales under their belt) might invest in:

MORE AGGRESSIVE/AVERAGE eBOOK COSTS for a 250-page (75,000-word) eNovel:
Copy-editing @ $2.50/page ... mid-market rate for slightly more experienced help: $625.00
Web site hosting ... Dreamhost as host, author domain and domain for book/series: $120/year plus $10 for extra domain ... $130 total.
Book Cover (A more expensive artist/designer) ... $150.00-$250.00
Review copies for reviewers ... just send them .mobi files ... FREE
KB Book of the Day ... one week ... $195.00
Kindle Nation Sponsorship ... $149
Soliciting reviews and self-promoting ... Twitter, Facebook, etc. ... FREE
TOTAL COSTS: ~$1,300.00

This is probably where most authors need to be to present the best possible, most professional image. One could still go with a GREAT Ronnell D. Porter cover to cut costs a bit... but in terms of promotional efforts, this is closer to where a writer should be to reasonably expect to sell a decent number of copies.

At $2.99, the royalty is $2.09 and it would require sales of 622 copies to break even and recoup investment.

At $0.99, the royalty rate is $0.35 and it would require sales of 3,714 copies to break even and recoup investment... rare numbers indeed... ask McAfee, who's doing better than most!

I won't even post the details of a top-notch promotional effort, but the copy-editing rate for TOP-NOTCH copy editors is ~$5/page, so that cost alone goes to $1,250. Add in a PR Publicist Campaign from Outskirts Press ($219) and costs rise easily to above $2,000 to $2,500 and beyond. Add in a PumpUpYourBooks virtual book tour and you can slap another $400-$800 onto that...Could easily reach $3,000 to $3,500 range.

And that's BEFORE the author makes one dime to keep for themselves.

*Consider that, as self-employed folks, we have to make about $1.85 to make one post-tax dollar (thanks to double FICA) and the REAL costs double, as do the number of sales needed to "break even."*

So please... there are REAL costs to self-publishing and they are not insignificant.

For every Amanda Hocking and Joe Konrath out there, there are plenty of us who struggle just to get a book to market, and barely get any sales because we can't afford proper copy-editing or promotional efforts.

So please kindly consider these factors, Mark, before stating that "there's virtually no costs." You're just not properly informed on the fiscal realities of this sort of undertaking. And as a reader rather than a writer, that's not surprising. We don't expect you to be. But then, keep in mind there might be factors you're unaware of to all of this....

But would I complain if an indie author invested $2,500 to $3,500 to really go full-bore on proper copy-editing and promotional efforts, and then decided to ask $3.99 or even $4.99?

No, I would not. Not me personally, anyway. Unless the book stinks, in which case I'd wonder why they bothered, LOL...


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

If more indie authors went the way of paying for copy-editing I'd probably read more of them. I rarely do read them now. I've been exposed to some really awful stuff. I have figured out that if the sample has little of the story (and a lot of fluff) in the beginning to walk by. From what I've seen very few go the $1 page route. 
Some of the big publishers need to learn that they need to pay someone to actually format a book too. 
It is important to be a cautious customer in this market. 
I don't buy books based on the $ price of the book, unless it is extremely high. I am lucky enough to have a generous book budget. I buy based on my time it takes to read the book.   Is the book is worth the amount of my time it may take to read it, based on the enjoyment and/or intellectual stimulation I may get from the experience. I can make more money, but I can't make more time.


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## Ali Cooper (May 1, 2010)

I advised a friend putting his first offering up here for $2.99 when it was quite short to reduce the price. Because why should readers pay that for an unknown author when they pay the same for 100K plus, from someone who's established. Answer is they probably won't or if they do they may feel cheated.

However, you are known. It's just a real nuisance that amazon royalties work against you if you charge $1.99.

My suggestion - and I haven't read the entire thread so sorry if someone's suggested it already.

Give the word count in the description so you're being completely honest. File size doesn't really count as letting people know, especially as you might have included an image.

AND include a couple of bonus short stories that maybe tie in with the main book and push the total count to at least 60K.

If you do this then you should be fine to charge $2.99 as and when you want.


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

"So please kindly consider these factors, Mark, before stating that "there's virtually no costs." You're just not properly informed on the fiscal realities of this sort of undertaking. And as a reader rather than a writer, that's not surprising. We don't expect you to be. But then, keep in mind there might be factors you're unaware of to all of this...."

I specifically said cost of goods. That's different from sunk costs and marketing costs. After your book is finished, what does it it cost you to produce another 500 copies of your ebook? Another 5000? When you're dealing in virtual goods and competing with others dealing in similar virtual goods, there's a lot of downward pressure on pricing. What do you think would happen to the price of indie novels if Amazon lowered the threshold for the 70% royalty to $1.99? Competition would likely result in that being the new standard price for indie novels since the cost of goods for each ebook is virtually nil. Even now, a lot of writers price their work as low as they possibly can at $0.99 to get a competitive advantage. 

I am not discounting the time and expense that go into creating the work, though it's obvious to me that many indie writers do not pay for editorial guidance and make their own covers instead of hiring a cover artist. Their choice, of course. I was making a general statement about how I see pricing work in this niche of the publishing industry.


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

Mark,

I beg to differ. Here's your exact quote:



Mark Asher said:


> The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, *so the price can drop almost to the floor.* If $2.99 is the minimum for the 70% royalty, the majority of indie books will be priced, at $2.99 (or below). You have indie authors who have no name recognition and very little visibility and *tiny or non-existent marketing budgets*


I presented you with three marketing scenarios... bare-bones at around $335, middle-of-the-road at $1,300 and top-notch at $2,500 to $3,500 in costs... the bulk of which is proper copy editing in most cases.

So there are significant costs beyond "cost of goods" and the price cannot "drop almost to the floor."

You are ill-informed on the realities; I'm trying to let you in on them, but if you want to become stuck on "being right" then there's just no use in further dialog on this issue.

But believe me, "free" ePublishing is not free from costs that must be recouped.

Personally, I believe such things as proper copy-editing and investing in a good book cover are part of the "cost of goods," though I suppose as with all things accounting-wise, that's open to interpretation. But they are costs that must appear somewhere on the spreadsheet, regardless.

At $0.99, only the bare-bones pricing strategy works because not many eBooks sell over 900 copies.

Even at $2.99, only the middle-of-the-road marketing/costs strategy is advisable, for the same reasons. To have a reasonable chance to recoup investment, an indie-author can't go all-out on copy-editing and marketing until they've acheived a reasonable level of sales success using lower-priced strategies.

So, categorize costs however you want; that's up to you. Paperless publishing IS "free" in some ways... but that doesn't mean it's free of significant costs that have to be recouped somehow. And remember, we're self-employed and have to pay double FICA, so to consider that we have 100 copies sold in terms of actual income, we have to sell ~185 copies... Uncle Sam insists of being paid first, after all.

I also think lots of people tend to lump all indie writers into a group and think they're all the same. Not so.

Just as with traditionally-published authors, skill and quality vary from writer-to-writer.

Let me put it this way:

I recently paid $2.99 for NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS by Victorine Leiske and was wowed. I'd have been willing to pay as much as $4.99 or more.

In November, I fully intend to pay $12.99 for CROSS FIRE by James Patterson, because I'm hooked on Alex Cross, even though I think it's too much to pay. I'd rather it be marked down to $9.99 at most.

Guess which novel I already KNOW I'll have been more entertained by? Leiske's. No doubt about it.

And people can get her book right now for $0.99.

Believe me, Mark... it's not indies who are overpricing their work. If anything, we undervalue it; but it's a necessary step to building name recognition so that one day, instead of $0.99 or $2.99, we can charge $3.99 or $4.99 (and pay for better copy-editing and marketing, in the process) because people will know which of us indies are good and can be counted on to "deliver the goods."

All I'm saying is, there are less-obvious costs than just whether you have to pay for printing or not. Indies don't have the overhead of a New York publishing house, no; but we do have costs and, scaled to a self-employed scale, they are not to be dismissed as insubstantial with statements like, "Prices can drop almost to the floor."

Statements like that come from not knowing the realities of the matter, that's all.

But if you want to be right... be right.  It's a free country that way. Just realize that you have to narrowly define "costs" and ignore other significant costs to get there.


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

I don't know why you keep insisting that I don't understand that there can be costs associated with getting an ebook ready to publish. It's tiresome. Please stop. 

I am talking about the market realities of virtual goods. You cited Victorine Leiske as an ebook author you like. Let me rephrase things a bit: When Victorine sells through her current supply of her novel, what will her cost be to replace her inventory? Oh wait, there's no cost. Her inventory is limitless. 

When you have a situation like this, it's very easy for prices to drop down near the floor, especially when, as you have mentioned, demand for indie books isn't exactly high. You cited over 900 copies sold as something most ebooks never get to, and while I think you are probably just pulling this number out of your keister, I'll go along with it. So what do you think happens when supply is limitless and demand is low? How does that affect pricing? What would your econ 101 professor say?

"All I'm saying is, there are less-obvious costs than just whether you have to pay for printing or not. Indies don't have the overhead of a New York publishing house, no; but we do have costs and, scaled to a self-employed scale, they are not to be dismissed as insubstantial with statements like, "Prices can drop almost to the floor.""

I am not dismissing the creation and marketing costs. I have no ax to grind. I am trying to look at this as dispassionately as I can. You and I apparently will disagree forever on what "cost of goods" means, and that's fine. 

What I see are indie writers pricing their work at the absolute bottom of the scale in terms of where they can get that 70% margin, and some (many, in fact) are going much further and pricing books as low as Amazon will let them. How much lower is the floor here? Haven't I been stating the obvious? Do you think this downward pricing pressure will suddenly disappear? Not as long as the supply of goods is limitless and demand is low. You want to price your books higher? Drive up demand. 

All that said, I do think that pricing is still a bit up in the air because consumers don't really have fixed ideas yet of what ebooks should cost, other than they should be cheaper than paper copies. Still, as long as $2.99 nets that 70% I expect to see a lot of writers price their books there to gain a competitive advantage.


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## kcmay (Jul 14, 2010)

Maybe one way to look at it is to ask yourself how soon you can expect to be profitable? If you put out a new book every 12 months, then maybe you'd want to shoot for being profitable on book 1 by the time book 2 comes out. Say it costs $1200 to release a new title, based on editing, cover art, and promotion costs. That's $100 per month. If book 1 sells 50 copies per month, you'll need to sell it for $2.99 @ 70% to reach your goal of profitability by the time book 2 comes out. Lowering the price *may* increase your sales. If your success with selling at $0.99 is similar to Vicki's, then you might become profitable well before the 12 month goal.


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

Victorine said:


> I don't know why people think it's wrong to sell a full length novel for $.99. You can go check out plenty of full length novels at the library for free. Indie authors give away their books to libraries so their work can be checked out and read.... for free. That doesn't mean that people expect to go to a book store and get free novels just because they can check out free books at the library.


The library comparison is an interesting one, but it's akin to people buying your ebook, reading it in two days, and then returning it and getting their money back. People are willing to buy print books at stores for a myriad of reasons, and it's for those same reasons that people shouldn't be willing (in my opinion) to almost give their work away.


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> What does a $0.99 price have to do with quality? Answer: Nothing whatsoever.
> 
> And the $2.99 price actually pays writers about twice as much per sale as they'd get from a traditional publishing agreement for $7.99 paperbacks. So why is that a barely acceptable price?
> 
> What you're seeing are market forces at work. The cost of goods for ebooks is essentially zero, so the price can drop almost to the floor. If $2.99 is the minimum for the 70% royalty, the majority of indie books will be priced, at $2.99 (or below). You have indie authors who have no name recognition and very little visibility and tiny or non-existent marketing budgets. Being cheaper than the other guy is one of their most potent sales strategies.


I never said that books for .99 cents were all of bad quality. I'm sure there are some fantastic books available for 99 cents. My point was about the _perception_ of a book's quality, and I think that when many people see a book for 99 cents, especially compared to a book for 4.99 or 9.99 by an author they (may) have heard of, they're going to assume (correctly or not) that the 99 cent book is inferior.

I totally agree with you on the market forces - indie authors must find a way to compete with well-established authors, and the easiest way to do that is price. However, just because ebooks have lower production costs than print books doesn't mean author _must _ lower their prices in order to make the same money as before. Why not keep the price at $4.99 and make even more than you did before? It's still half as much as the $10 most people are willing to pay for bestsellers, and it's more money for the author. It's win-win.


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

kcmay said:


> Maybe one way to look at it is to ask yourself how soon you can expect to be profitable? If you put out a new book every 12 months, then maybe you'd want to shoot for being profitable on book 1 by the time book 2 comes out. Say it costs $1200 to release a new title, based on editing, cover art, and promotion costs. That's $100 per month. If book 1 sells 50 copies per month, you'll need to sell it for $2.99 @ 70% to reach your goal of profitability by the time book 2 comes out. Lowering the price *may* increase your sales. If your success with selling at $0.99 is similar to Vicki's, then you might become profitable well before the 12 month goal.


From what I've seen, the real profit only comes after you build a backlist. Obviously there will always be some exceptions, but the real money seems to accrue over time and from multiple titles. It's seems very important to me to have several books up for sale in the hopes that the sale of one book will generate return business.

Konrath has sold 100,000 ebooks, but he has 27 titles for sale -- probably 29 now. His books aren't outselling some of the indie writers here by that much. It's just that they have 3-4 books for sale.

It's kind of a drag because it doesn't look like a scenario where care and quality is rewarded as much as is quantity and speed. To make any real money, indie writers need to be pulp writers and grind out the books it seems.

So what would be a good sales strategy? Not sure. Write a lot. Price aggressively with at least one or two books to get in front of a reader's eyes. Have long-term goals rather than the expectations of a short path to profit. Don't give up your day job.


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> It's kind of a drag because it doesn't look like a scenario where care and quality is rewarded as much as is quantity and speed. To make any real money, indie writers need to be pulp writers and grind out the books it seems.


I couldn't agree more. However, it's interesting to note that this is almost exactly how the current print publishing industry works. Best-selling authors are expected to churn out at least one new novel a year, and it's probably closer to a 9-month cycle. Readers are voracious, and so are publishers. When you're your own publisher (and treating yourself like a business), you have to have the same attitude if your goal is to make money.


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

I'm quite happy to be a pulp writer, honestly. Nothing wrong with a lot of those books.

David Dalglish


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Half-Orc said:


> I'm quite happy to be a pulp writer, honestly. Nothing wrong with a lot of those books.
> 
> David Dalglish


Nearly all of my favorite authors started in pulp or at a time when publishers didn't limit authors to one or two books a year. (And yes, it's more often a limit than a push.)

Dashiell Hammett, Donald Westlake, Harlan Ellison, most of the writers of 'Golden Age' mysteries. Those people wrote a LOT and got extremely good at it. Some went on to more literary work, some just used their skills to do a better and more creative job with pulps.

There's a reason why Robert Heinlein put in his rules of writing: You must not rewrite except to editorial order. He wasn't recommending the submission of bad writing, but he was recommending that you learn to write well by writing more rather than fussing over the old stuff. (Here's a blog post I wrote about his third rule. http://daringnovelist.blogspot.com/2010/10/heinleins-rule-number-3-you-must.html )

I don't know that I agree with Heinlein in a self-publishing world - unless we take up the job of being an editor ourselves and do our own rejecting. But I do agree that the way to learn to write is to _write_.

Camille


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

daringnovelist said:


> Nearly all of my favorite authors started in pulp or at a time when publishers didn't limit authors to one or two books a year. (And yes, it's more often a limit than a push.)
> 
> Dashiell Hammett, Donald Westlake, Harlan Ellison, most of the writers of 'Golden Age' mysteries. Those people wrote a LOT and got extremely good at it. Some went on to more literary work, some just used their skills to do a better and more creative job with pulps.
> 
> ...


You're cherrypicking a bit when you toss out those names. I'd say Sturgeon's Law still applies -- 90% of everything is crap. Still, a lot of writers from that era who are justifiably forgotten made a living from writing.

That's interesting about Heinlein. He's talking about scrapping a work rather than doing a big rewrite. I'd agree with that. He certainly doesn't mean taking a draft and running with it, however. He means once you've polished a draft, it either floats or sinks, and if it's sinking, don't bother bailing. It probably is better to go on to the next thing.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> That's interesting about Heinlein. He's talking about scrapping a work rather than doing a big rewrite. I'd agree with that. He certainly doesn't mean taking a draft and running with it, however. He means once you've polished a draft, it either floats or sinks, and if it's sinking, don't bother bailing. It probably is better to go on to the next thing.


Actually, that's implied in his other rules - you don't scrap it. (But he's not talking about a self-publishing world.)

The full rules are:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you start.
3. You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
4. You must put it on the market. 
5. You must keep it on the market until sold.

His attitude isn't unusual in old time writers. You've got to remember that in that era, the fiction culture was closely related to newspaper writing. Often you started publishing your pulp fiction in newspapers. Many writers of the era were newspaper writers too.

I think writers could benefit from the mindset of the staff writer. You write well, you write now, you write to spec. The thing those writers gained was control. Get good at what you're doing - learn your dang craft - so you have control.

Camille


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## CraigInOregon (Aug 6, 2010)

daringnovelist said:


> Actually, that's implied in his other rules - you don't scrap it. (But he's not talking about a self-publishing world.)
> 
> The full rules are:
> 
> ...


Good words. I spent ~ 10 years in journalism so these lessons are part of my arsenal.


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

daringnovelist said:


> Actually, that's implied in his other rules - you don't scrap it. (But he's not talking about a self-publishing world.)
> 
> The full rules are:
> 
> ...


I think the key element that needs to be defined here is what he means by a rewrite? I can't imagine any writer composing a first draft and not going over it and doing some rewriting. And even doing more after that first pass.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Mark Asher said:


> I think the key element that needs to be defined here is what he means by a rewrite? I can't imagine any writer composing a first draft and not going over it and doing some rewriting. And even doing more after that first pass.


In those days a lot of them literally did not rewrite. They learned to compose in their heads and what came out of the typewriter was it. This is pretty similar to what old time newspaper people had to do too. There would be editing, but actual rewriting was rare. There just wasn't time.

Asimov was famous for it. So was Rex Stout (although Stout was an interesting case - he would spend something like 10 hour days composing a few pages - often resting his head against the typewriter for an hour or more before typing a few sentences.)

Reading interviews of people who moved on from pulp, yes, they loved to have the luxury of rewriting later in their careers -- but they knew how to do without it.

Camille


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

NickFox said:


> The library comparison is an interesting one, but it's akin to people buying your ebook, reading it in two days, and then returning it and getting their money back. People are willing to buy print books at stores for a myriad of reasons, and it's for those same reasons that people shouldn't be willing (in my opinion) to almost give their work away.


Are you really saying that people who check a book out at the library are doing the same thing (ethically) as those who buy one, read it and then return it for a refund? Or am I misunderstanding your post. Because I believe they are very different things.


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

LauraB said:


> Are you really saying that people who check a book out at the library are doing the same thing (ethically) as those who buy one, read it and then return it for a refund? Or am I misunderstanding your post. Because I believe they are very different things.


No, I don't think it's ethically the same, I just think the net result is the same. People who go to libraries do so because they want to read books without paying for them, and people who are willing to quickly read ebooks and return them are really seeking the same thing.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

NickFox said:


> No, I don't think it's ethically the same, I just think the net result is the same. People who go to libraries do so because they want to read books without paying for them, and people who are willing to quickly read ebooks and return them are really seeking the same thing.


But if they pay taxes, they have contributed to paying for them. I know I pay a lot more in taxes per year to the library than the cost of the books I check out in a year. (At the end of the year our city breaks down your property taxes and how much goes to each part the city taxes support).

Just sayin...


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## Nick Fox (Oct 26, 2010)

LauraB said:


> But if they pay taxes, they have contributed to paying for them. I know I pay a lot more in taxes per year to the library than the cost of the books I check out in a year. (At the end of the year our city breaks down your property taxes and how much goes to each part the city taxes support).
> 
> Just sayin...


I was just trying to make a comparison for illustrative purposes...


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

NickFox said:


> I was just trying to make a comparison for illustrative purposes...


Keep in mind there are something like 120,000 libraries in the U.S. alone, and they pay for each book in their collection. I don't think writers are being cheated.

That said, more and more libraries are starting to carry ebooks and allow checkouts from home PCs. We might see an uptick in library usage when more people have e-readers and libraries expand their ebook holdings. My girlfriend wants an e-reader just for that reason. "I'll never have to buy another book," she tells me.


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## daringnovelist (Apr 3, 2010)

Yeah, as any writer for children knows, Libraries are and EXCELLENT source of writer's income. For many juvenile lists - they are the main income stream.  Same with many literary works.

Used bookstores, while not a direct income source like libraries, also contribute to the writer's income, by allowing those with a tighter budget to buy new (and then sell or trade).  They are still a part of the income stream.

People who read stripped books (i.e. books which have had their covers stripped off and were reported to the publisher as unsold and shredded), or return books for full refund after reading, or who pirate books are not contributing anything even indirectly to the income stream, and they are the ethical equivalent of one another.  (IMHO, they are unlikely do much harm either - they're just slimey.)

Camille


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## Seanathin23 (Jul 24, 2011)

I'm working on a Hard-boiled thriller right now it is a hair over 50k words, probably gain another 1k in editing. I consider that a novel, though I'll admit that it is short. I got it a nice cover and plan to charge $2.99 for it. 

Probably knock it to .99 for a bit when the sequel comes out but $2.99 is a steal for a book period end of story.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

EelKat said:


> What I personally do price wise (for ebooks) is this:
> 
> .99c is for short stories, vignettes, essays, and non-fiction articles up to 5,000 words.
> $1.99 is for short stories, collections, essays, and non-fiction articles up to 10,000 words.
> ...


This pricing structure wouldn't work for most indie authors. Asking a reader to purchase a novella for $4.99 is really pushing it. If it works for you, then I tip my hat to you. But as far as I'm concerned, that's insane.


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