Results Are IN

Last December, ECW Press and I ran an experiment. For one week, they dropped the price of my mystery novel to $1.99 (ebook versions only).

They ran this experiment mostly to indulge me. My gut said – and still says – that the industry standard price of $10 for an ebook is too high. My proposed ideal ebook price was $4.99. I think that's a fairer price (relative to print books), and I think people would buy more ebooks if they were cheaper.

ECW Press disagreed, but they ran the experiment anyway. They're an innovative press – they're interested in experiments; they're interested in what the book buying public has to say. They're also good to their writers – I had a question, and they were willing to help me answer it.

So for one week, Dead Politician Society was $1.99 on iBooks, Kobo, and Kindle.

During the Experiment

The blogosphere was amazing. Word caught on, and lots of people helped me spread it. Comment sections were alive with debate and support, and these bloggers were kind enough to host me as I talked about the challenge in its various stages along the way.

Ebooks & the Industry On Chrisbookarama
Dialogue on Deadly Letters
Conversation with Leanna
How ebooks are revolutionizing the industry
Passion & Statistics on Coffee and a Book Chick
"The Great Ebook Debate" on Bella's Bookshelves
Preliminary Results Report on A Novel Source
Listen To The Voices

The Results
(If you hate math, skip ahead to the numbers in bold.)

Kobo – no change
Kindle – sold 35x as many books as the rest of the month combined
iBooks – sold twice as many books as the rest of the month combined

Adding actual book sales from all 3 sites, 5.5 times as many books sold during the promotion period as they did in the rest of the month. Since the promotion period got inadvertently extended to cover 9 days (both Kindle and iBooks had the price lower for an extra day on either side) here's the math I'm going with:

5.5 times as many books in 30% of the month = 18.33 times as many books per day, on average
$1.99 per book as opposed to $10.99 = 18% of the regular price in revenue
18 times as many books x 18% of the revenue = 3.3 x the revenue of a normal week

* I should note that because of the blurry edges of the experiment dates, we were forced to do some estimating re: Kindle and iBook sales. We think we got it right, but if we made any errors it's in favor of the lower price.

The Interpretation

Me: Awesome. More people are reading the book (which is great for a new writer – I care way more about readership than sales). And if sales dollars are up, even better – no skin off the publisher's back. My conclusion is easy – price matters, and lower is better.

ECW: We think people are buying the books because of the promotion, and not because of the price. We really don't know what the e-book market looks like, but we know a few things: Market surveys show that most readers agree that $10 is a fair price. A lower price doesn't get us very good placement on the sites. Under $7 is not sustainable for publishing books in any medium.

Other Factors Brought Into The Discussion

* Dead Politician Society was recommended by the CBC Mystery Panel as a holiday read. Immediately afterwards, Canadian sales spiked noticeably for a few weeks. Both ebooks and paperbacks sold at about five times their normal rate – for an increase in sales revenue of 5 times the norm (more than during the experiment). (Point in ECW's favor: promotion, not price driving sales.)

* Statistics show that books bought for under $5 are far less likely to ever be read. (Point in ECW's favor: Since the whole goal is increased readership, that negates the benefit of selling more books.)

* Lower pricing can devalue a book. If the industry standard price for an ebook was lower, that would be one thing. But to lower the price of Dead Politician Society to half while other new releases are being sold in the $10 range could make it look like it was cheap for a reason, thus deterring potential sales/readers. (Nobody's point – this is speculation.)

* The blogosphere really got behind this challenge. People were excited to help me prove my point. (Point in my favor: A lot of readers find ebook pricing unreasonably high across the industry, and they voted with their wallets and word of mouth.)

The Conclusion

While ECW Press is happy that the experiment went well – it got a bunch of people reading and interested in the book – they don't want to lower the price on a permanent basis.

I'm cool with that. If it was my call, I'd lower the price to $4.99 – mostly because I think keeping prices high isn't good for the industry as a whole, and I love that line from Ghandi: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

But I feel like ECW has listened to my questions and given me way more leeway than any big publisher would have. And they're probably making the right call from a business point of view: Lowering the price of my one book (or even their entire list) would not cause the industry to roll over and change their pricing – it would only make their books look less valuable. I understand ECW's decision not to sell their writers short. In fact, I appreciate it. I'm working with a phenomenal team of people who value the written word and will do everything in their power to make it thrive.

That doesn't mean my quest for lower ebook pricing is over – I'm just looking at it as a longer term challenge. In the meantime, I've ordered an e-reader - a Sony. I can't wait for it to arrive in the mail.