Why are authors lowering the price of their books

[[deleted user]]

I am trying to keep up with disscussions along with the ones on a Yahoo group I belong to that fights daily for the rights of Authors and against piracy.
More than once I have read about an author lowering or considering lowereing the price of their work. WHY??? Call me a kinds of wierd but my husband bought me my kindle 4 years ago now to save use money. A book that is 7.99 paperback I buy for 5.99. books that cost 14.95 I buy for much less.
Please tell me authors are not lowereing their prices to make them less attractive to pirates. If this is true you are ony hurting yourselves. Scum is scum, lowering prices only makes it look like they are winning.

[Brenna]

Some publishers came into the market and tried to sell at $8 or $10 only to find that the market is better at $6. It has nothing to do with piracy, and if the pirates think that, their heads are too big for their own good. I do not price my books with pirates in mind. I price them with the market and the paying readers in mind. Nothing more. Nothing less.

All told, there are very few authors changing book pricing for the reason of pirates. Most pirates will pirate no matter the price. I've seen pirates heisting ebooks that cost 49 cents. What does that tell you? It tells me there's no pleasing some of the pirates. They pirate because they want to, not because they have to...not because the books are too expensive for them. Because they want to.

If you want more proof of that, try searching out threads about Astatalk where pirates talk about what they do for a living. We're talking people making in the 75K and up range...way more money than I make, but they want to pirate, so they do. Rare is the pirate that says he/she uses piracy JUST to find new authors and then buys everything.

Brenna

[Guido]

The reason most authors lower their prices in order to get more sales. There is this belief that when you sell a novel for 99 cents more people are likely to pick it up and give it a try - especially when you're a new author.

I my opinion there is so much wrong with that thinking and I have spent some time pointing out the downfalls of this approach to other authors -- sadly I can not find the thread here on GoodReads right now.

[Rowena, Group Owner]

Guilty, but with extenuating circumstances in the case of Forced Mate for the electronic version.Forced Mate

Joe Konrath's experiment involves inviting pirates to "steal" his ebook while he continues to sell it on Amazon.

My experiment which has been ongoing for about a year involves selling the electronic version of Forced Mate through an exclusive and legitimate vendor http://www.ebookisle.net for $6.00

--or for $5.00 in an author-sponsored special, readers can purchase both Mating Net and Forced Mate together--

I also sell Forced Mate through jexbo.com for $1.99

https://www.jexbo.com/items/108

The price of the 58-page short, Mating Net is entirely under the control of New Concepts Publishing.

So, I could be said to have lowered my prices, and I confess that I did so because I wanted to see for myself how reliable the arguments that pirates make about price might be.

I think the pirates are talking through their hats. I don't believe that price makes a difference at all... unless we are in the $9.99 range, which neither of my books are.


Forced MateMating Net

[Tracy]

As an independent author I place the value on my work. People criticize me for the price of my Kindle books ($9.99) but the truth is, just because the buyer isn't getting a physical copy doesn't make the story worth less. For me, I deduct the cost of printing the book, S & H, and other incidentals to determine what I will charge for the Kindle book. My phisical copies are $19.99 (He Loves Me He Loves Me Not!) and $16.95 (Love...Like Snow In Forida On A Hot Summer Day).

My joy does not come in the numbet of books sold but in the feedback and encouragement from readers who love my stories.

www.TracyLDarity.com