The pricing of eBooks is a hotly-contested debate on many of the various writers groups and publishing groups of LinkedIN, as well as among my Facebook and Twitter associates. “Should I lower my prices?”, “Does selling at 99-cents devalue my books?” “I’m standing fast at $7; my books are worth it.”
The eBook market is so fluid that no one can really pinpoint what the average full-length self-published fiction novel is worth. “eBooks are worth whatever people are willing to pay,” one writer posted; a flurry of negative responses to this simple sentence appeared shortly thereafter, mostly authored by book publicists. Roughly half of those posting opinions on said sites seem to ‘fear’ the idea of pricing their digital prose at less than $5 a title, but many of these same folks offer a free short story or volume of poetry for potential customers to peruse. On the other hand, some folks price their books at .99 across the board to no small success, as illustrated in CNET’s article on “The Rise of the 99-cent Kindle e-Book”. Successful eBook writer/seller J. A. Konrath appears to do very well selling the majority of his titles for $1.99, along with offering a host of free downloads.
While such a strategy seems to work for some, it does not prove equally advantageous for all self-publishers. My husband and I set the price of all of our eBooks down to 99-cents for the month before last Christmas, and subsequently sold the fewest number of titles since launching our eBooks website in 2008. After raising the price back up to $2.99-$4.99, sales picked up immediately. It seems that some paying customers are of the mindset that book selling at less than a dollar are cheap in quality, and therefore not worth even paying 99-cents. After polling our own customers–that had bought books within the last few weeks–they unanimously affirmed that reading the “Amazon reviews” of our Kindle books, coupled with reading ‘sample’ chapters–left in various spots about the Web– is what sold them on paying $4.99, not the price itself.
However, after glancing over several hundred “most popular” lists of eBooks that sell—spanning several platforms—it is clear that most average consumers are not willing to spent much MORE than $5 for a fiction eNovel, a fact which the top publishing companies in the world seem to be deliberately overlooking. Consumers also appear to sport a negative attitude about DRM, being unable to share eBooks across different device and still seem to harbor resentment against most large publishing houses for “dawdling along behind the trend”, as one of our customers put it.
This “dawdling” may be hurting the Big 5 more than they realize. While indie eBooks priced below $5 grow in popularity and number of downloads, eBook titles being offered by large conglomerates seem to suffer from price hikes, while more and more younger consumers simply visit one of the numerous file-sharing torrent sites and download those newly-released titles for free. I’d sure like to know just how much of that 164.8% increase in eBook sales for December 2010 (vs the previous year) was reported from Smashwords, indie/self-publishing writers and the Kindle Store.
Despite the market’s fluidity indie writers are fairly safe staying below $5-a-title for fiction (with a few freebies) in order to both keep repeat business flowing and to garner new clients.
“it was reported today by the Association of American Publishers (AAP)”
So that figure doesn’t include self publishers. They have “nearly 300 members”. Smashwords have a lot of titles, but he’s cagey about sales, beyond saying that it’s “not enough to pay me a salary” after deducting his investment so far. Any intersection between Smashwords and the AAP 300 is probably not very significant.
So to be pedantic, the only category that isn’t obviously irrelevant is “indie […] writers [on] the Kindle Store”, inasmuch as they intersect with the AAP 300.
Pricing is tricky. How much would I pay for fiction? The answer is: It depends! I am not familiar with Meredith Greene’s writing so I would be very reluctant to pay more than $1.99 for one of her books, and I admit I’d probably think twice about paying that. OTOH, I’d happily pay $12.99 for a DRM-free version of the next David Weber novel (not a coauthored one; one written by him alone). Why? Because Baen Books got me hooked on him by giving me a free copy of some of his older work. In fact, I’d not only pay $12.99 for the ebook, but I would buy the hardcover as well.
Similarly, as a result of Baen’s making older works available for free, I discovered that I do not enjoy David Drake’s writing style and so would not be willing to pay anything for one of his books.
I realize that this evades in some respects the bottom-line issue, but the reality is that Smashwords and Baen have changed my buying habits. For example, I have been thinking about buying ebooks written by Paul Levine from Smashwords. I’ve hesitated because at the time I looked he wanted $4.99 an ebook and I was unfamiliar with his writing. But I was also unfamiliar with the writing of hundreds of other Smashwords authors who offered 1 or 2 of their books for less, including free. So I tended to pass over Levine and try these other authors. When I found one I liked, I simply returned to Smashwords and bought whatever else they offered (as long as it was a long-form novel).
Yet this past week I “bought” a couple of Levine’s ebooks from Smashwords. I put bought in quotes because for 2 of his books he offered 100% discounts as part of Read an eBook Week. They are next on my list to read and if I like his style, I’ll buy the ones I don’t have. This is how Smashwords and Baen have changed my habits. Previously, if the storyline looked interesting, I would pay the price and hope for the best; now I want to try at least one book buy an author for free or very close to that point.
Adding to the price problem is the quality of the ebook, by which I mean the grammar and spelling, not whether it has wide or narrow margins. eBooks from indie authors are too often a crapshoot. One Smashwords author wants $6.99 to $9.99 for his ebooks yet boasts in the first pages how he didn’t have the book copyedited at all and had a few friends proofread it. I looked at a sample and shudder to think that people were really willing to pay those prices for poorly prepared books (the homonym problems were frightening).
To my mind, this is the one thing that could improve author fortunes in the ebook age: if ebooksellers of indie authors instituted some form of quality control on indie ebooks. Buyers would feel more confident about paying higher prices.
I think the catch here is, if a bookseller puts out a quality product, people will buy from them, and get used to whatever price they set (if it seems reasonable). Then they will start to ask other booksellers why they can’t put out a quality product at that price. Other booksellers will use that price as a competitive point, trying to meet or beat it, and competition takes over.
This is, of course, how business is supposed to work, a give and take between seller and buyer, with product quality as the measure. As long as quality is still a negative issue, no price will seem “right” to consumers; so quality has to be nailed down before pricing can stabilize through the market.
Richard Adin,
Thank you for the well-thought out response. For indie writers like my husband and myself, we realize that by and large most consumers either go off name recognition or reading free samples. We put out quite a bit of free ‘samples’ of our writing, free chapters of our novels and articles, mostly on sites like Scribd, that any browsing future consumers can feel a bit better taking that initial risk on a virtually-unknown writer’s eBook. Offering freebies, along with the reduced prices, is just part of the current eBooks market.
Alan – I wrote the Kindle Store as a separate entity, and meant it so. The added [on] was neither contextual, nor necessary. Thank you, however, for your information. I found the adjective of “cagey” (in regards to Smashwords) both amusing and appropriate.