My husband is in the food business, so the debate over whether higher prices mean better quality is constant in our household. Pricier restaurants are usually better, right? And those underpriced gems? Why are they underpriced if they’re really gems?
The same debate is raging in the book world right now. An e-book priced at $9.99 has got to better than one at $2.99. And let’s not even talk about those 99-cent “dollar dreadfuls.”
But… wait. Haven’t you ever been disappointed — disgusted, even — by a meal you’ve paid a lot for? Or delighted to discover a cheap neighborhood café where someone’s uncle or grandma is cooking up family recipes with a dash of love?
(Don’t even get me started about what actually goes on in the kitchens of those pricey joints. You don’t want to know.)
The parallels are eye-opening. Fancy restaurants have fancier amenities and higher overhead costs to cover. Many are run by corporations backed by investors demanding profits and growth. And if you step back and analyze why certain categories of books are more expensive for the most part, you’ll realize that a lot of it has to do with corporate profit margins and bottom line.
Is that what you want shaping your reading choices or your impression of a book?
It’s true that there are plenty of dollar dreadfuls out there. But there’s just as much cr*p available for far more than $9.99.
Unfortunately, it seems a lot of readers don’t make that connection and assume that a book’s low price equates to poor quality. A friend of mine recently asked, “What can you expect from a book that costs $2.99?” That widespread bias is misleading, and sad.
It also hurts authors. Pricing has a big impact on book sales. Simply put, more readers buy lower-cost books. Unless a book is some sort of blockbuster or buzzed-about trend-setter, many of its potential readers will hesitate or hold back at higher price points. Those who don’t may be the type of sophisticated, discriminating readers every writer dreams of appealing to, but do we as authors really want — and can we really afford — to be discriminant about who reads our books?
With no bookstore presence, no New York Times review or media platform to help spread the word about Veronica’s Nap, I’d personally rather price the e-book on the low side, cast a wide net, sell more copies and increase the probability of reaching the individuals who will truly care about it.
Smart shoppers will understand the importance of other signs of quality, such as my cover blurbs (including one by a National Book Award winner), a peek at the content inside and rave reviews by book bloggers and Amazon customers.
Like the scent of a home-cooked meal wafting out from that modest-looking, mom-and-pop restaurant down the street, these speak for themselves.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
As a reader I have mixed feeling about what I will spend for a eBook. I’ll pay more for a book by an author I know and love, or that I’ve heard great things about–word of mouth is powerful. But I am definitely more likely to be tempted to try something by an unknown author if the price is moderate to low. I’m just not much of a gambler :-O
As an author, I’m more than a little bummed that my publishing situation doesn’t allow me to adjust my own eBook’s price or take a spin with any of Amazons Kindle promotions. Especially since I agree that your concept of “price the e-book on the low side, cast a wide net, sell more copies and increase the probability of reaching the individuals who will truly care about it,” is right on target.
Barbara – spot on! As readers, most of us will pay more for a book by an author we love or for one we’ve heard great things about. Trouble is, in the vast sea of books out there, only a tiny percentage have that sort of profile. Which leaves the rest…where?
It’s definitely to any author’s advantage to be able to adjust their books’ price, run promotions, etc. It’ll be fascinating to see how this particular aspect of the “traditional” v. “indie” publishing dynamic plays out over time.
I understand and agree with pricing models that reflect the market’s buying interest, BUT I still find it very disappointing, overall, that the .99 cent price point ever became a standard (for ANY book), because of the sheer amount of effort, talent and dedication that goes into creating a book. While I believe the price point to have come from the .99 cent song model, it’s such an apples to oranges approach. A .99 cent song is only PART of an entire collection, of which its parts are sold separately. An entire book is sold for .99 cents. If we were really to adopt the music model (parts of a whole on sale for .99), then each chapter – not an entire book – would cost .99 … That’s just my simplistic way of looking at it. Not realistic, I know, since a book could have 40 chapters and would then end up being a $40 book. But the point, to me, is that for the effort and creativity involved, .99 seems to unfairly label the value of what it is authors do – all authors.
But since this IS the norm, you’re right. What options does an author have? Casting the wide net is among the best strategies for success.
I’m with Melissa on this. I just spoke to a friend about the pricing of ebooks. She asked whether I shouldn’t consider the $.99 song model and I said, “No, it’s not the same.” (BTW, most new songs are $1.29 now, aren’t they?) At my insistence, she thought about it and said, “I guess ebooks are more like an album, aren’t they? So $9.99.”
While I agreed — I also insisted that readers should expect a price consistent with *their* level of entertainment (that is, even the quickest fluff read provides more than four hours of entertainment), even for an unknown. Despite believing that $10 isn’t unreasonable when considered in this light, I think that ebooks should probably be $5-$7.
Amazon has sampling and returns, so there’s no reason for people to worry about throwing good money away on an unknown author. In addition, everyone loses at $.99 because I think readers are more tempted to buy a lot of cheap ebooks without discriminating, perhaps spending more overall than if they’d bought two or three titles after taking more time to choose. If they buy enough badly written and edited books at $.99, they’ll feel cheated and not necessarily try someone new. And, the $.99 authors aren’t making enough at that level to justify their time and talent. In this blog article from an indie author, you can read in his comment thread about why a relative of his has learned to stay away from cheap indies: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/01/12/how-t-self-publish-so-it-benefits-readers/
Here’s a very successful indie author’s take on finding the right pricepoint for ebooks:
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2011/10/guest-post-by-selena-kitt.html. I believe that she’s chosen to price her full-length novels at $4.99.
And here’s a successful traditional author with her take on what she feels is the shortsightedness of indie authors and their pricing of ebooks: http://kriswrites.com/2012/01/04/the-business-rusch-writers-will-work-for-cheap/. Notice that she mentions $4.99 as a reasonable starting point.
I think it will be awhile before the prices stabilize to something all parties can be comfortable with. I refused to pay $11.99 for a Kindle ebook tonight for a book published originally in 1994 for godsakes. I understand that traditional publishers have overhead, but this book already made its fair share almost twenty years ago. If it had been $4.99, I would have bought it. So I requested it from the library. I can wait.
Melissa, LeAnn – Thanks for weighing in! So interesting. And the good news for everybody is that there really is no one right answer.
I agree that in an ideal world the amount of work that goes into a book or song or any other product should be factored into its price. But in this crazy economic environment where price value is quickly losing its correlation to the things that go into making a product (e.g., what’s a Starbucks coffee REALLY worth?) my take is that we authors should look at the bigger picture, not the reader-by-reader or per-unit picture, and think: “what overall compensation level do I think this story can and should generate?” In other words, how much do I think this book can / should gross overall as opposed to how much should each individual reader pay for each individual copy of it.
At higher price points, fewer copies will sell. The price difference will probably not make up the difference in overall compensation resulting from lower sales, so the “world” (for lack of a better term) will have paid less for this particular story overall, and the author will have gotten compensated less, no matter how valuable it is or how much hard work went into it.
As for bad books at low prices etc, well, it’s still a jungle out there and may be for a long time. But I don’t think that any individual author should base decisions on that. We each just need to do what we feel is best for the particular book we are selling. And aren’t we lucky to have that option!
I have a friend who, after getting a tablet, buys tons of ebooks because of the one-click option and because of the exchange rates with the dollar, she sticks to the cheaper ones. She doesn’t expect profound content, she expects entertainment.
I agree with you on this one. Better cast a wider net (especially with your first book) and get more readers who are likely to come back for more. Besides, I do make decisions based on my own buying habits and I’m not very willing to buy an ebook over $6. If it’s more than that I’m more likely to buy a paperback instead.
I don’t buy ebooks for less than $2.99 and if I do it’s because it has been put on sale for a limited time. If I want a cheap read, I use my local library. If it isn’t good, I take it back. No risk because eventually those $.99 risks add up.
On the other hand, I rarely buy an ebook over $7.99. It is like buying wine. Sure, there are some fantastic bottles in the $20 range but there are some just as good in the $10 area; they are just yet to be discovered. One thing I know for sure, you will never see me drinking Boones. I don’t care how cheap it is, it isn’t good.
Great conversation! Love hearing all the opinions!