Paranormal romance author Zoe Winters was one of the pioneers of e-book self-publishing, before Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking or any of the other names you may have heard of. She was smart, and strategic — and worked really, really hard — and it’s paid off for her. She has a growing, loyal readership, and is making a living from her writing. I don’t do fangrrl, but if I did I’d probably be a Zoe fangrrl.
So when I heard that Zoe had done a guest post at All Indie Publishing on e-book pricing, I went to take a look. And, as is most often the case, I thought she made some really good points.
Besides just pointing you to the post and saying “What Zoe said,” I’m adding one other point of comparison on pricing. Downloading a single song generally costs 99 cents. That’s become the accepted price point.
But a book isn’t a song. A short story is like a song, maybe, but a book is more like an album. So, if you’re an indie author doing the 99 cent price on your books, ask yourself: does anyone expect musicians to price their albums at 99 cents? If you saw an album that cheap, would you think it was any good? The answer to the first question is certainly no, and I think for most of us the answer to the second question would be no too.
A plea to indie authors: do yourselves a favor. If you want to be taken seriously, as a purveyor of quality material, don’t price your books at 99 cents, unless it’s for a very short time, as a special promotional price. For a short story, sure, 99 cents is a fair price. But longer works are worth more, and should be priced accordingly.
Let’s not train readers to expect e-books to be permanently cheap. It does us all a disservice.
Great point re: albums and books. I wish more indies would pick up on that. Some have said they think it’s hypocrisy for me to say 99 cents is bad, when I once did it. But I did it when it was still a “strategy”, and I knew why I was doing it. I also did it too long, something I’ve acknowledged.
When everything is driven down to the bargain bin, then it hurts us all, and a lot of people don’t think long-term enough to get that. I can understand low pricing as a temporary sale, but I don’t understand starting books at 99 cents and leaving them there indefinitely. It DOES devalue the work, because it makes people assume out of the gate that you suck. Because instinctively most people know if an author is both good and has self-confidence, they aren’t pricing full-length novels at 99 cents.
Well, there’s hypocrisy and then there’s learning from experience. When you tried it out, it hadn’t been done to death and there were fewer people able to give real-life experiences to learn from. That’s not an excuse anymore. Frankly, I think a lot of writers (not just in indie publishing) are lazy marketers. Rather than putting in the serious market research up front they look for general trends to jump on. Lowball pricing is one of them. We saw it in freelance writing, and we’re seeing it here. And eventually you hit a saturation point where the exposure goes away and you’re just left with a cheap product.
So it’s a bit unfair to call you hypocritical. If you still charged 99 cents and told others not to because you didn’t want the competition, or if you charged more and told everyone else to charge 99 cents to cheapen their image in comparison, it would be a different story. But that’s not the case.
Having worked extensively in the indie music world (music PR) and having published e-books for several years now I can tell you they have a lot in common, and frankly I think authors still have a lot to learn from their creative counterparts. But pricing isn’t one of those similarities, so great comparison.
Yes, indie artists put a lot of work into their songs. They may even have similar expenditures (their studio time and mixing versus the indie author’s professional editing and design work for e-publishing). But the time put into a single song doesn’t usually compare to the time put into something like a novel. Compare an album and you might get a little closer, but not a song.
People also need to keep in mind that indie musicians have far more opportunities to build income streams through other means — licensing those songs for corporate use in commercials and TV shows, selling merch at gigs, landing paid gigs on a much more frequent basis than an indie author would be paid to speak, etc. There’s just no comparison. And if you use something that unrelated to set your e-book prices, it’s nothing short of irresponsible.
Hi, Jennifer — sorry for the delay in approving your comment; I was out for a while.
Excellent points about music vs. publishing, the amount of time spent creating the product and other income stream opportunities.
And I certainly agree that Zoe’s no hypocrite. She’s always been upfront about the why and wherefore of what she’s doing.
Oh… and I love that flaming Z!!
Hehehe … I thought it suited you.
Lol, sometimes I think I should get a bumper sticker made that says, “What Zoe said.” Of course, I’d have to do the same thing with Jenn Mattern of All Indie Publishing
I always wonder if/when there will come a time when I actually disagree with either of their POVs and if my head will explode at that point.
Great analogy re: songs vs albums at $0.99.
Hi, KH! I think it’s possible I’ve disagreed with Zoe about something, but I don’t remember what it was.
hahahahahahaha. If you had a bumper sticker that said “What Zoe Said” then everybody would say: “Zoe Who?” then you could mention the videos.
And your head is still in one piece, firmly attached to your neck? Good to know, I feel much better
It’s possible that I repressed the awareness as an act of self-preservation.
That’s very true regarding the difference between albums and songs… The only caveat to that is that in this day, you don’t HAVE to buy the whole album. In the old days, we had to buy the album and hope all the songs were good. Now there is an option to download a song at a time.
That said… I totally agree with you on pricing. As tempted as I am to lower the price of my novel to $.99 for the visibility, my husband keeps talking me off the ledge. Honestly, I think $4.99 is a very fair price for a 150,000+-word novel. I did have my 30K word novella at $1.99, but I’ve lowered that to 99 cents in hopes of drawing in some readers. And I have another novella coming out soon that will be at 99 cents. I’m hoping that the two lower prices will draw people to read the longer work.
Pricing is tricky, and it’s not always as clean as saying “99 cents = sales,” anyway. I have a friend who wrote a wonderful steampunk novella, and it’s barely selling, probably because he’s mostly an unknown. And Joe Konrath’s experiments with pricing prove that there’s no magic formula–even when he lowers his prices, the books don’t always do what he expects.
Price what you think your work is worth. And then keep writing.
Good post!
Hi, Amy! Good point that people don’t have to buy a whole album anymore. But as this post by Nathan Bransford points out, more than a decade after the introduction of MP3s, most of the music industry’s revenue still comes from CDs. So low-priced volume, even for billions of songs downloaded, didn’t overcome CDs as a main source of revenue. I think it’s safe to say that the same will hold true for ebooks.
You’re right that there’s no “magic formula,” but I feel comfortable asserting, as a general principle, that permanently low pricing on full-length books will do more harm than good.
That’s true. I did read that post. It’s not an exact apples for apples comparison between writing and music, but yeah, there’s a grain of truth to what he’s saying.
And yes, I agree with you that as a general principle, low pricing on full-length books is not a good idea. The funny thing is, when I was trying to decide what to charge for my novel, I asked consumers who aren’t in this weird microcosm I’m in what they thought of a $5 debut novel. They all said, “is that all?”
So clearly, perception from the reader/consumer side of things isn’t necessarily the same as from the writing side.
@Amy maybe it’s just writers who are cheap about buying ebooks. Sad commentary, huh?
Another thing is that when someone buys a novel for $.99, they might get around to reading it eventually, but if they shell out $4.99 for one, they are probably going to read it sooner since they want an immediate return on their money.
As Nathan Bransford puts it, VigRoco, it’s the “perception of value.” People may not think an ebook is worth $12.99, for example; but they may not think a 99-cent ebook is worth reading at all.
Amy, “Is that all?” Good to know.
I think there will always be readers who want the cheapest thing they can find, and there will always be readers who are willing to pay more for quality material.
I wonder, too, how sample downloads will influence pricing/purchasing across the board–indie and traditional. I know that when I go to a bookstore, I’ll flip through to see if the quality of writing is decent, or I’ll buy a book based on a recommendation, but I don’t really sit down and read the first few chapters right then and there.
But now… I downloaded a sample of something that a lot people rave over, thinking if it was good, I’d bite the bullet and pay the $9.99 (or whatever it was–it was high) for the e-book. But I thought the sample was slow and unengaging, and I honestly couldn’t see the point. Someone told me it started slow and got better, but really, if you can’t engage me by chapter four, I’m not going to pay $10 for your book.
On the other hand, I might download a sample from an indie and be so engaged that I have no problem paying $5 or $10. For me, it’s about entertainment.
Yes, I think VigRoco is right about e-book hoarders and impulse shopping. It’s easy to shell out 99 cents and never read something. Shell out $5, and you’re more likely to read.
I also read something a while back about consumers perceiving books as art/luxury purchases. Supply/demand economics kind of get reversed with luxury purchases. The rarer/more expensive something is, the higher it’s perceived value to the consumer. I think books fall somewhere at the lower end of the scale on this, but they do seem more luxury oriented than stuff you get at the dollar store…
The discussion continues.
And good heavens–why do these dang apostrophes keep sneaking into my “its” all the time? I can’t spell today. This happens when I’m in creative/muse mode….
Amy, I think the free samples are an excellent selling tool. Some readers can be pretty patient with a story; I personally prefer a faster pace, and I don’t know if I’d even get to the fourth chapter of a sample I found dull. Conversely, though, if a sample’s engaging, then the reader’s much more likely to be willing to buy the book, unless it’s more than they’re willing to pay for any book. But for ebooks in the $5 range, I just don’t think that’s an issue for most readers.
As for the apostrophes, they’re sly little things, aren’t they? Always going where they’re not wanted, and refusing to show up where they are. I think that happens to all of us in creative mode.