Loyal Readers and How to Kick 'em in the Teeth

I had a plan this morning, I was going to sit down and do a quick post about - well I'll save that for tomorrow. That went out the window when I got a price drop alert from a mate with the line 'mistake or cynical promotional move'. I followed the link and saw that the brand new James Herbert novel ASH has been discounted. Deeply discounted. Impossibly deeply discounted... to 20p.

Huzzah all loyal Herbert fans say! Or do they? I mean ASH is the third story featuring David Ash, Herbert's psychic investigator, and follows on from Haunted and Ghosts of Sleath. It's a novel that's been six years in the making and obviously MacMillan want it to be a rip roaring success so they're buying it a top of the chart slot with some cynical 20p digital strategy. Good for them. Not, however good for the loyal Herbert readers. Readers have been preached at by writers for years about momentum and how an intense burst of sales in the first week or so of publication is vital for chart positions - how selling 10,000 copies in one week could guarantee you a slot in the UK chart but selling the same 10,000 copies over 20 weeks wouldn't. Slow burners they call them. They're great, too, obviously, but people want to put 'bestseller' on the cover as that means something.

ASH came out on August 30. 12 days ago. Amazon have a return policy of 7 days on digital books. So MacMillan have set the 20p special five days after those loyal fans who've been preached to about momentum can return it and save a few quid.

A few quid? Actually, the digital list price of ASH was 10.79 UK, or about what, 14 US... we're not talking a few quid. It's a kick in the teeth for loyal readers. For those who put their orders in in advance to give the book the momentum it needed.

If MacMillan wanted to pull a launch stunt at price at 20p why not reverse it - why not do it for a day or two or even five days - from the day of the launch so in fact the loyal readers were the ones being rewarded for their support?

Because obviously some cynical bodies somewhere realised they'd be prepared to pay an inflated digital price given the hardcover is for sale at 10 quid, 79p cheaper than the digital edition was (despite the stamped price of 18.99).

So what's the upshot of this?

For me it's about trust - there are several digital editions on Amazon at 20p at the moment, Peter James' Dead Man's Grip, for instance, replacing Peter James' Perfect People, both published, again, by MacMillan... Perfect People was James' most recent paperback... so, I look at the MacMIllan webpage and see books coming from lots of great writers - and remember MacMillan is one imprint, the main company owns Pan MacMillan, Tor UK, Picador, Boxtree, Kingfisher and others... and I know that I can't TRUST these imprints to value customer loyalty anymore. In fact I can reasonably assume that any title the release could be cynically dropped by as much as 10 quid just 12 days after release if they're popular books they want to chart...

So what do I do?

I stop buying books in the first week/month of release...

Exactly the opposite effect the marketing gurus would want. But I'll just start to wait for them to cut their own throats and give me the books for 20p. I mean, they don't value my loyalty to their authors so why should I show any? It's like SKY when you're a sky customer there's bugger all in the way of offers, you're in. You only get improved service when you threaten to leave. But if you're not a SKY customer there's digital discount packages and enticements out the wazoo... because loyalty doesn't seem to matter any more does it?

In a day and age where people are so wound up about piracy damaging our industry it's amazing how much damage they can do to it themselves with one stupid idea.