What Is A Book Worth?
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about the price of ebooks; whether it’s wrong for independent authors/self-publishers to use the agency model (setting your own prices) to undercut mainstream publishing, or whether, like the music industry, its providing good value to the consumer.
There are also arguments that suggest it’s morally wrong to price a piece of art so low, and such low prices devalue literature. I’ve read convincing arguments on both sides and have thought about how I feel about it, and here’s what I think.
1. Competitive Pricing
Personally, I have no problem with the current agency model of the publisher setting their own prices. Much like capitalism and democracy, it’s not perfect, but for me personally, it’s the best current system. Now, I come to that opinion mostly as a publisher. For authors tied to contracts with traditional publishing, they might lose out. But, I think the agility of moving prices to reflect or influence a market is a good thing for publishers in general. Although we’ll see how that pans out after the court case with regards to price-fixing and collusion.
2. Bargain Bucket Pricing
To begin with I didn’t have much of an opinion on this, so for the last six months I’ve experimented, and I can now say for certain that pricing books low doesn’t always equate to more sales or more income, and can actually damage the long term reputation of the author/publisher.
Sales for my books and those of my publishing arm ‘Anachron Press’ have not changed since upping the price beyond the bargain bin.
However, that’s not to say I’m against short-term sales, or low introductory prices for books at the beginning of a series. A loss leader is a well seasoned retailing method, and making your work/series accessible is not a bad thing.
What I don’t agree with is the John Locke model of selling absolutely everything for the lowest price to game the sales rankings. It’s also come to light recently that John Locke purchased paid reviews to artificially place his books higher in Amazon’s ranking system, and coupled with Stephen Leather’s admission of using fake accounts to promote/review/pimp his low-priced works, the whole pot of low-priced books has been spoiled by a scummy after-taste.
I think it’s now important to price our books above that level. And apparently Amazon thinks the same with its recently algorithm change, which benefits higher priced books.
Low Price, Low Value, Low Priority
Secondly, I personally don’t believe that the majority of super-low-priced books are even read. I’ve done it myself; bought a whole bunch of $0.99 ebooks, or even downloaded a bunch of free ones, and they sit languishing in my kindle/ipad always being put to the bottom of the pile until I finish the regular priced books first. The regular priced ones feel like ‘proper’ books, not something cheaply produced and cheaply sold. This might not always be the case. There are genuinely good books that are sold low for a sale period. I bought some China Mieville and James Herbert books that were dropped below a quid. But those are different; they are established authors and you know you’re going to get a degree of quality.
Quality isn’t always the case with bargain basement books; there’s a risk factor there. Not financially of course, but time wise. Am I prepared to invest 8-10 hours reading time on an unknown author selling their books for less than a quid? My experience has told me no. I’m not willing to risk it. And with reviews easily purchased, I can’t rely on them either. So it’s either try the sample, waste some time in an effort to find a gem, or shop in the more expensive isles. I still might buy a stinker, but I know that I’m cutting out a certain degree of those who look to emulate the ‘make it cheap, sell it cheap’ ethos of Locke/Leather et al.
So, going forward, I’ll be pricing my books competitively but not bargain-bin levels. I will only buy books that are fair priced, and/or in a sale. I will only buy books that I intend to read. That last one for me is the most important. Even from a publisher point of view. It’s nice to have the sales, but I’d rather have readers actually reading my books and not just collecting them for the sake of it.
What’s your view on pricing? Do you collect cheap books, or do you read them? I would love to hear what you think.
Posted by ColinFBarnes- Posted in Thoughts On Fiction
Aug, 30, 2012
6 Comments.
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Fanatical About Fiction
Colin F. Barnes is a quill-wielder of vibrant, edgy fiction, mixing sci-fi, horror and thrillers.
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I actually wrote a post about this back in March when Dean Wesley Smith (an established author with a huge backlog of OOP books) revealed his new thoughts on pricing. To say the least, I was disappointed in him. Until that point, I had been a huge advocate of his. But I guess in order to afford his lifestyle, maybe he has to price higher? Dunno. My main thoughts are here: http://www.samantha-warren.com/2012/03/indie-pricing-dilemma.html
In short, so you don’t have to read it all, I’m able to price lower because I’m self-published and I don’t have an extravagant lifestyle. I want people to be able to read my books, but I do still want to eat.
Under 3000: Free
3000-15000: $.99
15000-30000: $2.99
30000-50000: $3.99
Over 50000: $4.99
As you mentioned, cheap and free are good short-term strategies, but they’re not the huge boost they used to be. Most of the freebies I download go into a “To Be Read” collection and stay there. Free/cheap give people a chance to see what your voice is like without a huge monetary commitment, but it should be used carefully. If you have only 1 book, $.99 is not going to help you much.
Hi Sam, I think I err slightly towards DWS’ approach. But then I invest a lot in cover art and editing, so I have to view it as more of a business. One model I quite like is Michael Stackpole’s $1 per 10k words up to a max of $6.99. This is something I’m likely to do, although I don’t price my short stories under $2.99 unless it’s a sale/offer. I used to offer them for $0.99 and my sales have not changed since the increase, and the feedback has improved. I think this is because I’m appealing to a different audience, and not those looking for cheap and disposable. I think if you sell your books too cheaply, you’ll find it difficult to get out of the bargain ghetto and reach a wider audience IMHO.
Your comment about the true cost of a book being the time spent to read it is bang on. I’m pretty certain I’ll die with books unread on my bookshop and Kindle v45.6 (never mind all the ones I want to reread) so I don’t want to waste time reading some crap no matter how cheap it is…
Not that there aren’t good books out there at bargain prices (the first indie book I ever read was the 86p Oblivious by Neil Schiller, which is still one of the best). But it seems to be getting harder and harder to find the gems. Or maybe I’m just not trying as hard.
Obviously the 99c price is a pretty good one for short stories/novellas too, so I’m glad it’s there.
I agree. I’m glad it’s there and we have a choice to use it. And for smaller fiction it can be an option. But I think discoverability and points-of-difference will become very important, and raising your books out of the hyper-competitive 99c market is one way to avoid being labelled as one of the hacks.
Hey, Colin!
Great post. Yeah, I think I agree with you on all of this. I listed my debut – which I just had to re-release since I lost my publisher and am now going it alone – at 4.99. I did the whole free event thing, but didn’t make the splash I had hoped for. I, too, have the Kindle full of freebies and .99 cent books which I am getting to slowly but surely. I usually read them to the end, and have been pleasantly surprised by a great many of them; however, I have begun to give up on a few of them, too. It’s all to do with the time we spend on them, as you rightly describe. Now I have begun to decide to cut out a lot of promotion which is only going to be seen by other writers, and look for those ways to find the readers. I want to help my writer pals where I can, but ultimately I need to work on getting my work out there to the masses first.
Oh, well. If only we knew at the start how easy the writing part would be compared with the marketing.
Have a great weekend!
-Jimmy
You raise an interesting point James. A lot of our time seems to be echoing around the same circle of writers, and I don’t think going free really gets us out of that insular zone. Good luck with your book, 4.99 is more than reasonable.