E-Reads is taking on Laura Kinsale’s backlist. Here’s what they say:
Rita Award-winning Laura Kinsale has been acclaimed America’s leading historical romance novelist, and E-Reads is thrilled to commence reissue of her backlist with beautiful new packages. We’re starting with Uncertain Magic, published for the first time as an e-book.
$9.99 for both the backlist ebook and the paperback for a book that’s almost 10 years old? No thanks.
Nope. Not at that price.
There’s a long discussion over at Dear Author about backlists. Most seem to feel that $5 or $6 at most is the sweet spot for a backlist title. $9.99 is ridiculous.
No way will I EVER pay 9.99 for a backlist ebook. Kinsale or others. Especially ebooks that I don’t have the same rights over as a PB. I recently priced some Robb, Jayne Ann Krentz and Quick ebooks at Amazon, BN, BooksOnBoard, which were priced from 6.99 to 15.99. Yes, 15.99US for a backlist ebook. I don’t think so.
I bought a load of backlist Quick, Peters, Ryan, Cruise, et al, ebooks (pre-Agency pricing fiasco) for 5.00 and under. Shop around.
It seems like authors whose rights were reverted and are self publishing, and publishers who are are testing the price point waters to see what we are willing to pay for an authors backlist. Train The Reader. Start us off at 9.99 or more and if sales aren’t good, drop it to 7.99. There will probably be the resting point. Same as a new MMPB. It would be nice to supplement my PB keepers with digital, but I’ll take a pass on those prices.
Note to ebook retailers: I also shop at UBS, garage sale, flea market, and pick up backlist books for under 3.00. Unfortunately you don’t get a piece of the pie when I buy used, do you?
Price point should be at 5.00 or less for backlists. Bundle them up for series with a decent price.
What a shame. These are books I’d buy – at reasonable prices.
Trouble is, the publishers don’t drop the prices. They raise them to make up for “lost” revenue. They said they’d drop prices when a hardback goes to paperback, but I’ve rarely seen that actually happen.
You are right becca – it seems clear here that there is a clinging emotional involvement b publishers with their prices. They are obsessed with their perceived ‘value’ of their product instead of the actual market value. That they would earn more with lower prices doesn’t register through this cloud of misguided obsession.