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how long should a book be for 99p
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My 77p (but $0.99) book is also 23,000.
Depends on the author, I suppose. I'm intrigued by the idea that ebooks allow us to experiment with different literary forms, like novellas and short stories.
Me too, Will. I would never have seriously contemplated shelling out on a novella prior to getting my Kindle.
My three 99c/77p shorts are - according to Amazon: 19, 22 and 27 pages.That is about 3,000, 5,000 and 7,500 words.
I tell a lie! You get 26k for 99p with my second book. I've written a few more since then and I'd forgotten!
So between 15,000 and 25,000 words seems reasonable?
77p or 99p is a good price for one of the short stories, but I prefer to buy a collection of short stories (which I would pay more for) than an individual short story.I have seen books of about 50-60 pages at £1.99 or more - one (I can't remember which now) was £6.99 for a 25 page story. {I didn't buy them ;) }
I've moved the price of my ebooks (about 130,000 words) up and down at various prices between 77p and £3.99 and it hasn't made the slightest difference to sales. The reason, of course, is that the ebooks remain invisible to 99.999% of the book buying public. I still sell hundreds of times more print copies at £7.99 than I do ebooks. One small cafe on Dartmoor has sold twenty times as many copies as Amazon has managed in print copies and ebooks combined. If I have a point at all it's that pricing is the least of our worries.
Certainly standing at Loncon and selling more than fifty copies of Justice 4.1 propelled it straight into my best-seller list!
Excellent! It's visibilty not price that determines sales.
Broken City, The Promise and Fracture are all 99p and they're all over 90.000 words. They're all the start of series and I want to hook the reader at a lower price and encourage them to take a chance.
That being said, my short short stories are the same price and they're between 2500 and 4000 words.
For 99p I'm happy with anything 5,000 words and up IF it's good quality and interesting writing. I'd rather read a 5k word masterpiece than a 100k piece of garbage.
It is all about visibility and how well known you are. A new Jack Reacher short at 10,000 words would still sell like hotcakes at £7.99. Sell at whatever price best gets you noticed, short or long story. If that means selling a 100,000 word novel for 77p just so you can promote the low price to push up the charts, then it's worthwhile exposure. It's harder for short stories below 25,000 words because sub-pound prices are already expected, unless you're already a name. Price is, and I think will always be, relative to the size of your readership, not the length of your book.How long should a book be at 99p? All the while that price is working for you. I looked at it this way... When I reduced a book, did I get a boost in sales? If I did then I kept it at that price because my readership was growing at a faster rate than it was previously. When sales dropped back to the same rate as they were at the higher price, the promotion ends and the price goes up again. Then I'd give it a month or so and try again.
I wouldn't feel right charging anything more that 77p/99c for a short story up to 25,000 words I guess.
I have to watch every penny I spend so it is very rare that I would spend very much on a book. My last book I spent a lot on was a hardback with gorgeous illustrations for £7.77 including shipping. (Judith Kerr's Creatures) If we're talking kindle books, it would have to be something really special for me to spend 59p-1.99 for. The only one I spent more on was my favourite book by JG Ballard - Empire of the Sun and that was £2.99HOWEVER I did spend £7.12 to get the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of War and Peace on the Kindle. It was 1296 pages and full of notes, it took me 10 months to read along with a friend and I did consider that money well spent as my eyesight was too poor to read it in hardback.
It has to be said that ten months of reading for just over seven quid, you've not been diddled :-)
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Books mentioned in this topic
Judith Kerr's Creatures (other topics)Empire of the Sun (other topics)
Justice 4.1 (other topics)
But back to reality.
Looking at the 99p book, how long should it be? Looking at various examples, 20,000 words (70 to 80 pages) seems to be about sensible?
What do folk think?