Alexandra Sokoloff's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-price"
To Nook or not to Nook...
Okay, the Nookers have guilted me into putting some of my newly re-acquired backlist up for THEM. So at least for the next few weeks, here you go:
For Nook: $2.99
On Amazon: $3.99
Five troubled college students left alone on their isolated campus over the long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious presence... that may or may not be real.
Bram Stoker & Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel.
"Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an ancient evil entity. Plenty of sexual tension... fast pace and engaging plot."
-- Kirkus Reviews
For Nook: $2.99
Amazon: $2.99
A Boston District Attorney suspects his wife has made a terrible bargain with a mysterious hospital counselor to save the life of their dying child.
"Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre."
-- The New York Times Book Review
For Nook: $2.99
Amazon: $2.99
Two psychology professors and two exceptionally gifted students move into an abandoned Southern mansion to duplicate a controversial poltergeist experiment - unaware that the entire original research team ended up insane... or dead.
Based on the real life, world-famous parapsychology experiments conducted at Duke University by Dr. J.B. Rhine.
"Sokoloff keeps her story enticingly ambiguous, never clarifying until the climax whether the unfolding weirdness might be the result of the investigators' psychic sensitivities or the mischievous handiwork of a human villain." -- Publisher's Weekly
I have to say this Nook thing is a bit of an experiment.
One of the amazing things about e publishing is the sheer control authors now have over pricing and venues, and the infinite flexibility of choices we enjoy (or dread, depending on your point of view!). We can change the prices of our books literally overnight, and play with where we choose to make our books available, to determine what is the most profitable for us.
And when I say profitable, what I'm really talking about is exposure.
There's an ongoing and vehement debate about the effectiveness of e publishing for Nook. The big problem is that Amazon is so incredibly effective at marketing that enrolling in the Kindle Select program, which makes your book exclusive to Amazon for three-month periods at a time, has been for some time now more profitable for authors than making books available on multiple platforms (including Nook).
The two reasons for this are:
1) The ability in the Kindle Select program to promote your book for free for five days of those three months, an incredible marketing spike, and -
2) Any book enrolled in Kindle Select is made available in Amazon's Lending Library, and authors are paid a certain amount per borrow (about $1.70 for a $2.99 book, but it fluctuates.)
So the math that authors are being forced to do is - "Can I reach more readers and make more money with Nook sales or with borrows from the Amazon Lending Library?"
And the answer seems to be - "It depends on the book."
Thus my experiment this month, because I really don't know. My goal is to have the most people read my books as I can reach, and I'll choose whichever path is getting my books to the most readers. And the only way to find that out is just to try.
So I'm trying, and I'll report back on how all this goes.
Authors never used to have to think about this, by the way. Our publishers did all of this - or DIDN'T do it, as often seemed the case! - and we had no control or input whatsoever over or into the various strategies.
Now it's up to us to research, analyze, experiment, and go with the best strategy for whatever our goal is in publishing.
It's a lot of control, and a lot of responsibility.
And a lot of authors I know are freezing up at the sheer overwhelm of the increased demands, and not jumping in to this brave but chaotic new world.
I'm trying not to freeze up, even though it really is kind of annoying, alternating with terrifying, to have to make business decisions like this instead of just concentrating on the free-form creativity that writing is. I really HOPE that having my books up on B&N for Nook will prove viable; I hate the idea that anyone with an e reader would not be able to instantly download any one of my books any time they wanted one. After all, instant gratification is the very essence of e reading, isn't it? It sure the hell is for me.
But if my goal is the most readers I can get...
Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
The fact is, with e publishing, we GET all of those numbers. And the numbers are very telling, and they don't always tell what we want to hear.
So how about you all? Authors, what are you finding on the Kindle Select vs. multi-platform question? Is Nook paying off for you, or are you sticking to Select? Anyone trying Kobo's new program?
And readers - how many of you actually ARE Nook readers? If you are, are you supporting the Nook platform by buying a lot of Nook books? Are you aware of how agonizing a decision this is for authors?
Any insights greatly appreciated!
- Alex
For Nook: $2.99
On Amazon: $3.99
Five troubled college students left alone on their isolated campus over the long Thanksgiving break confront their own demons and a mysterious presence... that may or may not be real.
Bram Stoker & Anthony Award Nominee for Best First Novel.
"Poltergeist meets The Breakfast Club as five college students tangle with an ancient evil entity. Plenty of sexual tension... fast pace and engaging plot."
-- Kirkus Reviews
For Nook: $2.99
Amazon: $2.99
A Boston District Attorney suspects his wife has made a terrible bargain with a mysterious hospital counselor to save the life of their dying child.
"Some of the most original and freshly unnerving work in the genre."
-- The New York Times Book Review
For Nook: $2.99
Amazon: $2.99
Two psychology professors and two exceptionally gifted students move into an abandoned Southern mansion to duplicate a controversial poltergeist experiment - unaware that the entire original research team ended up insane... or dead.
Based on the real life, world-famous parapsychology experiments conducted at Duke University by Dr. J.B. Rhine.
"Sokoloff keeps her story enticingly ambiguous, never clarifying until the climax whether the unfolding weirdness might be the result of the investigators' psychic sensitivities or the mischievous handiwork of a human villain." -- Publisher's Weekly
I have to say this Nook thing is a bit of an experiment.
One of the amazing things about e publishing is the sheer control authors now have over pricing and venues, and the infinite flexibility of choices we enjoy (or dread, depending on your point of view!). We can change the prices of our books literally overnight, and play with where we choose to make our books available, to determine what is the most profitable for us.
And when I say profitable, what I'm really talking about is exposure.
There's an ongoing and vehement debate about the effectiveness of e publishing for Nook. The big problem is that Amazon is so incredibly effective at marketing that enrolling in the Kindle Select program, which makes your book exclusive to Amazon for three-month periods at a time, has been for some time now more profitable for authors than making books available on multiple platforms (including Nook).
The two reasons for this are:
1) The ability in the Kindle Select program to promote your book for free for five days of those three months, an incredible marketing spike, and -
2) Any book enrolled in Kindle Select is made available in Amazon's Lending Library, and authors are paid a certain amount per borrow (about $1.70 for a $2.99 book, but it fluctuates.)
So the math that authors are being forced to do is - "Can I reach more readers and make more money with Nook sales or with borrows from the Amazon Lending Library?"
And the answer seems to be - "It depends on the book."
Thus my experiment this month, because I really don't know. My goal is to have the most people read my books as I can reach, and I'll choose whichever path is getting my books to the most readers. And the only way to find that out is just to try.
So I'm trying, and I'll report back on how all this goes.
Authors never used to have to think about this, by the way. Our publishers did all of this - or DIDN'T do it, as often seemed the case! - and we had no control or input whatsoever over or into the various strategies.
Now it's up to us to research, analyze, experiment, and go with the best strategy for whatever our goal is in publishing.
It's a lot of control, and a lot of responsibility.
And a lot of authors I know are freezing up at the sheer overwhelm of the increased demands, and not jumping in to this brave but chaotic new world.
I'm trying not to freeze up, even though it really is kind of annoying, alternating with terrifying, to have to make business decisions like this instead of just concentrating on the free-form creativity that writing is. I really HOPE that having my books up on B&N for Nook will prove viable; I hate the idea that anyone with an e reader would not be able to instantly download any one of my books any time they wanted one. After all, instant gratification is the very essence of e reading, isn't it? It sure the hell is for me.
But if my goal is the most readers I can get...
Well, we'll just have to see, won't we?
The fact is, with e publishing, we GET all of those numbers. And the numbers are very telling, and they don't always tell what we want to hear.
So how about you all? Authors, what are you finding on the Kindle Select vs. multi-platform question? Is Nook paying off for you, or are you sticking to Select? Anyone trying Kobo's new program?
And readers - how many of you actually ARE Nook readers? If you are, are you supporting the Nook platform by buying a lot of Nook books? Are you aware of how agonizing a decision this is for authors?
Any insights greatly appreciated!
- Alex
