Ramblin' (Wo)man

It's a real book!

by Christine Kling

"Lord, I was born a Ramblin' Wo-man

Trying to make a living and doing the best I can."

But it ain't easy. Oh Lord, it ain't easy.

Okay, so this blog is all about folks who want to "quit your job, move onto a boat, and write." The way we sailing writers intend to make a living is by writing, so you hope you are going to make enough money to support yourself in some sort of minimalist cruiser's lifestyle – and for most of us that means at least one or two cold beers and a little rice and beans as we hang on the hook for free, right?

So, today, I hope you won't mind if I talk dollars and sense.

That was no typo. I do mean sense, because it seems to me that there is no sense at all to this world of pricing for ebooks – and giving them away for free. I mean, we are trying to make a living here, right? And pricing of books is essential to this.

I wrote last week about my struggles with the print version of CIRCLE OF BONES. For me, getting a print version is all about trying to accommodate my readers, and when I uploaded the final beautiful layout of the print version, I discovered that if I made it available to bookstores, I would have to price it at a minimum of $19.00. For a paperback. I'm not kidding. That seemed crazy to me, so I took it out of the Expanded Distribution and priced it at $14.99. That was the best I could do. It's a fat book, after all, and paper is really expensive. There has to be some middle ground where we sailing writers can make a few pennies off the work and still offer it to the public at a reasonable price. Books produced by the POD (print on demand) technology are more expensive, and I had the audacity to write a long book. Long means fat and means lots of paper – hence a steep price.

My answer to the questionI posed a few weeks back, "Are sailors cheap?" was ultimately, yes. Paper costs lots of money, and that's one reason why so many sailors are early adopters of the ebook technology. And I admit, I like getting stuff for free as much as the next guy. But how am I going to make enough money to keep me in beans and beer if I'm giving away my writing for free? So I priced the print version of CIRCLE OF BONES at a point where I make about a buck a book.

The writer Zoe Winters writes this about ebook pricing, "It also attracts too many one night stands. People who will drive by, click on the buy button, but won't respect you enough to tell others about it (for the most part) and maybe not even enough to read it in the first place. "

So the question concerning ebooks becomes, do I want fans or do I want one-night stands?

Frankly, even as a former hippie, I must admit, I have never been a fan of one-night stands. And if I am going to be really frank, I'll admit that I know this from experience.

But then I look at all my fellow writeonthewater bloggers like Mike J and C.E. and John Urban all of whom have climbed way up the rankings, sold thousands of books, and made huge fan bases for themselves by pricing at 99 cents and/or giving away books for free. I wonder if I am crazy to hold my price for CIRCLE OF BONES at $3.99. Granted it has only been a couple of months, but I am not selling anywhere even close to what these guys are doing.  And I admit, I have been considering changing my stand – but in the end, I've decided, I just can't do it.

I do understand the marketing value of giving products away as loss leaders. And I also understand the Amazon ecosystem of algorithms that means that if you give away tens of thousands of books, once you put it back at the original price, it will then appear on thousands of pages under the "People who bought this book also bought this . . ." and that will lead to increased sales. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I believe in this book that took me five years to write, and I hope that with time, people will discover it, talk about it, and the book will find more readers. I have to keep the faith.

I have recently started the process of getting the rights back to my Seychelle books and I intend to re-publish them myself. I might be a lot more willing to put the first book of that series on sale at a bargain basement price or maybe even give it away for free. Because, the point is, I want to keep writing and cruising. I don't want to be forced to go get a job as a Walmart greeter. I have the idea for the next Cole and Riley book, and an idea for a new Seychelle book, and an idea for a new Young Adult series about a girl who is half human and half mermaid – and I want to have the time to write all these books.

And most of all, I want to get back on board my boat and head off for the Bahamas in a couple of months, because like the Allman Brothers say when it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand.

Fair winds!

Christine

Author of CIRCLE OF BONES
Available for Kindle and Nook

 

p.s.

Kudos to the Allman Brothers who just won a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards for 43 years of making music. Has it really been that long?

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