A crosspost on ebook pricing

To put this post in context, I was on the Shocklines forum, and the topic of high-priced ebooks came up. A few people mentioned in the thread about opting to use 0.99 cent prices for their ebooks on the grounds that they are unknowns. So, my post was both addressing the linked article about high ebook prices from big publishers, and my thoughts on 0.99 cent pricing. And after I hit post, I reread it and thought, I need to share this on my blog. I MUST SHARE THIS WITH THE WORLD. No, really, I even tweeted words to the same effect. So, here is my cross-posted thoughts on ebook pricing.

I agree when the books start moving past the price of the paperback. If Joe A. Writer puts out an epic novel of 200K in words, I don't think he should charge only 0.99 for it if he self-publishes, and if he goes through a publisher, they certainly can't afford to sell books at the bottom of the pricing scale. There is some initial success that one can find in using a 0.99 cent price, but it doesn't lead to reviews. So even if the books temporarily rise in the sales ranks, there's no correlating rise in the "buzz" factor. But I think the 0.99 cent price is better used as a temporary gimmick, and not as a long term price policy.

Also, people are more forgiving of price than some others are claiming. There is a small and vocal group of folks who think that every book should be 0.99 cents just like songs on iTunes. But they are not the full market, and they represent only a tiny niche of the ebooks markets. The vast majority of readers I've engaged don't mind paying $4.99 for an ebook, or even $6.99. But they feel that if the mass market paperback is $10.99, then they should get a slight discount for not buying all that paper. So if the print book is $10.99, they want to pay less than $7.99. And this is a reasonable expectation, in my opinion.

I've seen some back catalog books from King going for as high as $35 on Mobipocket, and I learned from other readers that those files are direct OCR scans with no editing whatsoever. So they did no work on the new ebook, no editing whatsoever, and added no cover. But they feel this error-laden, coverless book is worth more than a hard cover copy. This isn't just insane. It jumps to fucking plaid.

Since most of my stuff is self-pubbed, I price according to word counts. A short story or novelette is 0.99, while my larger novels sell for $3.99 or $4.99. I'm still getting sales at this price range, although I admit Smashwords is not as huge a market as Amazon. But I'm still able to convince folks to try out Smashwords, and once I get them into my storefront, my prices don't cause sticker shock and send them running away.

So again, I think the 0.99 price point is good for putting work on sale, or for getting early sales as a new author. But after you've tapped that smaller vein for a little while, it runs dry, and then there's no harm in raising your prices so that you make more per sale. To put this in perspective, my recent sales have been slower because I'm only listed in one market. BUT, my current Smashwords balance is $134, and I first had to climb out of a debt for ISBN numbers totaling -$79. (I'm still not sure how to feel about having "credit" with Smashwords. Now it feels like it might be a good thing. But when I was in the red for three months, it didn't feel so nice.) So yeah, I think there's something to be said for raising prices during slow sales, not gouging them until it's impossible to turn a profit. It won't result in more people talking up the books, so in my opinion, the price has a very limited range of use to self-pubbed writers, and it's worthless to publishers.