Robin Spano's Blog - Posts Tagged "ebook-pricing"

So maybe it's not the most genius business move to use your own book as a guinea pig, but I'm on a mission to find and prove the right price range for ebooks. By "right" I mean that sweet spot that's fair to everyone - readers, writers, publishers, booksellers. Where creators are paid & buyers aren't gouged.

My instinct has this price at $4.99. The publishing industry is keeping it up around $10.

In December, my publisher and I ran one experiment. Details and results are here.

Now, ECW Press has given me an exciting new challenge: they're willing to experiment again, and they're asking me for ideas about what kind of experiment we should run.

The purpose of the experiment is twofold:

1. To continue trying to determine the sweet spot for ebook pricing, and what direction the publishing industry would take on ebooks if it was smart. (Ha ha.)

2. To act as a promotion when Death Plays Poker (book 2 in the Clare Vengel series) comes out in October 2011.

As may be apparent, my primary goal is #1 & ECW's main objective is #2. But that's fine - people with different end goals work together to come up with awesome results all the time. (And it's not like our objectives conflict - they're also interested in experimenting and of course I'm also happy with promotion.)

So here's the question: Which of the following promo ideas do you think would yield the most interesting research results?

a. Lowering the price of Dead Politician Society to $1.99 for the month of September.

b. Lowering Dead Politician Society to $4.99 September through October, and starting Death Plays Poker off at $4.99 for October only.

c. Bundling the books so that when someone buys the Death Plays Poker ebook in October at its regular price (approx. $10), they receive a free ebook of Dead Politician Society.

d. Lowering Dead Politician Society permanently to $4.99 as soon as Death Plays Poker is released.

e. Giving a free e-book with the purchase of a print book. (Suggested by Jennifer Robertson Quirion on Twitter.)

f. Selling Politicians at the regular price and including a voucher for $5 off Poker for a limited time. (Suggested by Leeswammes)

g. Something else - I would love to hear suggestions.

I think ebook prices are too high. It's not that I think a great read isn't worth $10-$15 -- it's worth way more. But I think lower prices will get books into readers' hands quicker. I think $4.99 is the right price -- the price that sells books and pays the people who work on them.

My publisher, ECW Press, begs to differ - they think the current industry standard is about right. But they've been cool enough to run experiments with me to see if the marketplace says differently.

We ran an experiment in December -- results are here -- that we both interpreted differently. (To me, it was clear that people would buy more ebooks if they were cheaper; ECW felt the success of the experiment lay more in the promotion.)

But ECW is an open-minded press. They publish books with an edge, and they watch the industry with an edge. They want to know what consumers want, and (unlike any other publisher I've ever heard of) they listen to ideas from writers, too.

So they're trying this new experiment -- a slower, less dramatic one. For the month of October, Dead Politician Society will be $2.99 across several platforms.

This doubles as a promotion for Death Plays Poker, the second book in the series that was released a few days ago. (The wicked plan is to get people hooked on the series by giving them a cheap first taste, ha ha.)

But -- like with the first experiment -- my excitement lies in waiting for and interpreting the results. I'm just so curious to find that sweet spot, pricewise.

It's up on Kobo, Nook, Sony Reader Store, iTunes & Kindle.


I'll post the experiment results as soon as they're in.

What should an ebook cost? Opinions are floating around everywhere. Some say $0.99, others say $12.99. There's a big school of thought that says $2.99. My gut says $4.99 is a reasonable price - it both pays the people who work on the book and acknowledges that an ebook is indeed worth less money than a print book. My publisher likes the price around $10.

It's my publisher's call how they price my books. And I'm fine with that - they're smart people with an eye on the changing industry. Like most traditional publishers, they like higher ebook prices than I do. But unlike most traditional publishers, they're entertaining the discussion - they're willing to play with the pricing of my books so we can do market research together.

The next step in the ongoing ebook price experiment with ECW Press and the Clare Vengel series: a 2-in-1 bundle from Kindle.

I'm excited about this one - it satisfies both my thinking that the price of an ebook should be approximately half of a print book, and it satisfies my publisher's position that to sell a book too cheaply devalues the book, makes it appear to be worth less. So for $9.99, both Dead Politician Society and Death Plays Poker are being bundled into one ebook - Clare Vengel Undercover Mysteries

This isn't a deep enough discount that people who aren't excited about the books themselves will buy it (like the $1.99 or even $2.99 experiments were), but it's what I'd call a reasonable price for a book you can't pass on to a friend or leave in your guest room.

I'll post results when they begin to make themselves clear. Still waiting on stats from the $2.99 experiment, but (IMO) the $1.99 results ring loud and clear in favor of lower pricing.