From the Smashwords blog. I suspect that the sample is too small to be statistically significant.
One of the pricing options authors and publishers can select at Smashwords is “Reader Sets the Price.” The reader pays on the honor system. They can take the book for free, or they can select a price of $.99 or higher. …
We looked at a small sample of 353 recent “purchases” under this pricing option at Smashwords. Of the 353 purchases, 299 customers selected to take the book for free and 54 paid money.
Next, we looked at the breakdown of the voluntary payments. The payments ranged from the lowest minimum of $.99 to a high of $12.42. The average price paid was $3.20, and the median price (for you statistic geeks out there) was $3.20. As you can see from the chart, the distribution of payment amounts was fairly even.
Interestingly, when we compute the average yield per book “purchased,” including the zero dollar purchases, it averages out to $.49 per customer. …
Does it show I’m a complete cynic to wonder whose mother provided the $12.42 payment? It would certainly be interesting to see the differences (if any) between the 299 who didn’t pay and the 54 who did. Also, it would be interesting to see if there were books which had a high percentage of payment (which would tend to indicate that the system works in terms of rewarding worthwhile author efforts), or whether it’s a random process.
When I launched BooksForABuck.com, PayPal wasn’t a fully developed option and I experimented with voluntary payment options. My experience was not good.
I truly believe that a set price sends worthwhile signals to the customer…that they’re buying something of value. A ‘pay what you want’ system confuses the reader while making it easy to ‘forget’ to pay.
Rob Preece
Publisher
Were there any stats on whether people who took the free option came back and put money in? I have on occasion downloaded a donation product, and after using it, gone back to pay what I feel it was worth.
The other unknown is how many of the zero-dollar “buyers” actually read what they acquired. When there is zero cost there is no value judgment associated with the acquisition. People will grab anything they can get for free, even stuff they’ll likely never use or would want if they had to pay for it, just on the off-chancethat theymight get to it some day.
Felix is spot on. I bet most/none of those ‘free’ downloads would have been made at all if it was something folks had to pay for. I know I’m guilty of grabbing every freebie for the Kindle and Sony and anything put up in the Suvudu free library, because I ‘might someday be interested’ in it and I better grab it while it’s available. Of course I’ve also ended up spending hundreds of dollars on other works from some authors after I got hooked by their freebie.
~Brian
I imagine that’s just an accurate assessment of the worth of the average self-published book. I’d probably pay an average of $5-7 for a published ebook. That’s my sweet spot right now.