How low? There’s always free. But one thing I’ve learned as a consultant is that many people don’t respect things they get for free.
Does it make a difference? Here’s our experience: We were selling about 10 copies of the first book in our Atlantis series a day at $2.99. Then we dropped the price to .99 just a couple of days ago. We’re now selling over 200 copies a day and it hit the top 20 in Science Fiction on Amazon.
That’s a big difference.
We also dropped the price on my latest, new novel, Chasing The Ghost to .99 and we went from selling a couple a day to 100 and it hit the top 20 in Men’s Adventure on Amazon.
It’s not just the pricing. We’re doing other things to promote the book, particularly being active on social media, but there’s no doubt the pricing had the largest role.
When you drop pricing below $2.99, you drop from 70% royalty to 35% royalty, which kind of sucks, but even then, I’m not making that much less than I make on a sale of a mass market paperback book.
I don’t believe all eBooks should be .99 and it’s more a promotional thing than anything. Lisa Gardner hit #1 with a .99 eBook this past Sunday in the NY Times. There are five more books in the Atlantis series and they’re all $2.99. All my other thrillers are also $2.99 and we’re seeing a growth in sales of all those.
Our goal, which we’re achieving is to get more readers.
Because of this, I’m making plans to release a trilogy of books on 12 April 2011, the 150th Anniversary of the start of the Civil War:
DUTY, HONOR and COUNTRY novels of West Point & The Civil War.
It’s going to take a lot of work to get all three ready by then with copy-editing, covers, formatting, and, uniquely, adding in enhanced material, such as photos and maps. The reality is, that if I tried to go with a traditional publisher, they wouldn’t be able to release the books for over a year. The world is becoming a much faster place and publishing needs to catch up.
Write It Forward
Fantastic post!
When I finally get thr rights back on my novel, Blessing in Disguise, and do some selling on my own, I’m going to lower the price!
I also love this sentence, The world is becoming a much faster place and publishing needs to catch up.
I fully agree:)
Have a great day!
Tamara
Interesting. The marketing side of me loves this type of talk. Now if only the writer side of me would get a book written to try some personal experimentation. Congrats on the upswing in sales. Good move for sure in the overall scheme of things.
Does anyone else find this depressing as hell? Books selling for .99?? 2.99 is too much? Can you think of any other “product” where the creator/inventor/writer/artist, etc. spends years of his or her life producing something, and the value of this product is less than a buck. Seriously, that is insane.
Thank you for your post. As a noob in the writing industry, I feel like I’m walking into a kaleidescope. Your blogs help me make sense of it and realize that traditional publishing is not the only viable option for a serious author. I’m not in a position yet to eat the mushroom, as Kristen Lamb would say, and I appreciate you sharing your data when you do try a new one. Glad this mushroom is a keeper. All the best.
As an aspired writer and fan of your wonderful books, I find your information very interesting. I think personally.99 cents is a great deal, but it’s also sad when you think of all the effort and time you’ve spent writing them.
Then again, look at all the new readers you are touching, that you may not have otherwise.
Wish you well on the Civil War trilogy. Ulysses S. Grant, Beauregard, are a couple names I recall studying. Look forward to the read.
Neecy
It might be depressing for publishers but not so much for authors. On a $5.99 mass market paperback an author made around .48. On a $2.99 eBook and author who does it herself can make $2.10. Over four times as much.
It’s just reality.
And I’d add that to the author, the value of the book (beyond needing to keep food on the table and the lights on in the house) is the quality of the story itself. How well it resonates with a reader. How many readers it reaches who want to take the book’s journey with you, and come back for another ride.
One of the most exciting, rather than depressing, things about the new digital age of publishing is that more great books and more writers who might not otherwise find their audience now have a chance. Sure, there are exceptions where you’re getting what you pay for when you spend .99 cents for a book. But if a spends her dollar and find fabulous new book or author or series she might have overlooked at a higher price point, then her friends HAVE to buy it, then their friends…that’s the kind of word-of-mouth momentum authors dream of.
I guess what I’m saying is that if a .99 cent price point pushes my digital sales to a whole other level than I’ve sold before and builds my readership exponentially over what could have been achieved in a print-only campaign (or a digital push with print prices), then I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel the quality of what I’ve done hasb been denegrated. I’m thrilled to be pushing through to a new audience and to be selling at an amazing pace.
Writers want to reach their readers. We have to investigate, like Bob and Jenni are, how to make that happen in this age where stores are closing, chain book sellers are filing bankruptcy, and few non-branded authors can make it onto the discount store bookshelves that helped run the rest of the business into the ground. And we (and our publishers, those of us doing digital with a NY house) have to ready to rethink the standard “valuation” of a book from the eyes of the readers whose purchacing power drives our industry.
Grant is at the center of the books. Beauregard is there for First Bull Run and Shiloh.
Bob, sure this is great for authors who are willing to self-pub. What about authors who still have agents/publishers/booksellers taking a cut? As the price for books goes down, is it really possible for all of these levels of the publishing industry to be supported? I don’t think so.
What I am seeing at the Amazon boards and on Goodreads, etc., is the majority of readers looking for deals. Even books that are not great-quality. As long as they “get a deal”—are paying under a buck for a book—they don’t really care. This worries me. I thought that readers would always be willing to pay for good quality books/authors, but now they would rather “borrow” an ebook from a friend if the price is too high. For God’s sake, they are posting poor ratings for books at Amazon if the ebooks are priced too high!
This may be good news for self-pubbers, but for a lot of people in the publishing industry, I have a feeling the future is not looking so rosy right now.
Penny, like I said above, this change is affecting everyone–even those of us in “hybrid” situation. I’m a Harlequin authors, so I still get racked in traditional stores all over the world. My other NY publisher, Dorchester, however from a mass market model to direct-to-digital/trade paperback.
My Spring sci-fi/fantasy release will be my first with a heavy push behind it for digital sales. And I couldn’t be more terrified and excited at the same time.
The reality is, there’s little to no money for the author anymore in a mass market paperback release. Too few traditional stores remain and too few slots exist within those stores for the non-Nora Roberts writers. Not that we don’t love Nora and her peers–they’re keeping bookstores and publishers in business right now. But NY publishing (like Dorchester was forced to last fall) has to face the their business model is broken, and change is essential. So do authors.
So, I’m watching close all that WDWPub and others are doing independently, and I’m heavily involved in the promotion plan for Secret Legacy’s May launch, and I’m learning with every success and misstep, right along with the self and indie pubbed authors. In the end, there’s not that much difference between us anymore.
Like I say in my Thursday Publishing Isn’t for Sissies posts, w’re all in this together!
I don’t know. Pricing a book for $0.99 might be a great way to get rid of those overstocks but not so much on the profits. It somehow puts books in the cheap categories. Though I’m a fan of the $0.99 books (especially old classics such as Shakespeare), I don’t think we should price books that low. What we could do is bundle them together. I think the best option is to bundle. Say, a book costs $15.00. Then, we should add about 13-14 books together so that people would get a sense that it’s free.
Then again, reading Amazon’s laws, they don’t allow bundling.
Very well said, Bob, especially the point about people not feeling free is worth it. Sometimes the hardest thing to overcome is the price vs value equation, as consumers may still be brainlocked into ‘needing’ hardcovers at $25, and publishers asking the same — or more — for the ebook version.
It’s a great world out there for independent authors and established ones alike!
“People don’t respect things they get for free”??? I hate to say this, but there is very little difference between .99 and free. Furthermore, when any books are available for free download (famous authors to unknowns), the readers at Amazon go crazy. Word spreads there and at Goodreads. The prevalence of these freebies and .99 deals are making readers spoiled and reluctant to shell out even a couple of bucks for good quality books. This just seems like a dangerous trend to me, and unfortunately, you can’t go backwards.
Someone had to prove it, Bob. You did. The numbers are staggering and impressive.
Joy
There’s a huge difference between .99 and free. It’s called profit.
I’ve had 40 books at least traditionally published and sold over 4 million in hardcover and mass market. So I know both sides.
The basic problem is that it’s not about author profit, it’s about publisher, bookstores, etc profit. All those people want to keep their jobs. So do I and not once have I seen an article in the news about an author not getting their contract renewed. I’ve seen tons about an indie bookstore going out of business. And over 50% of indie bookstores I’ve approached about working together have blown me off about my books because I write genre.
Traditional publishing is defending its turf with the agency model and in doing so, they are destroying themselves. Random House, who just announced today they are going to agency model, won’t even reply to me about ebooks and other issues even though they’ve sold 1.2 million of my Area 51 books. The attitude of most in publishing is that 95% of authors are replaceable parts. Except we’re not any more.
You know those agents, publishers, book reps who are taking a cut? What exactly are they doing for you any more? We constantly hear all them saying authors have to promote themselves. Authors have to do their jobs. So if I’m going to do their job, I’m taking their cut.
Our motto at Who Dares Wins Publishing is: Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. Traditional publishers are not leading. They’re not even crawling forward. So get the hell out of the way.
The problem for traditional publishing, and those who are holding onto it so tightly is that those people between the author and their reader are simply just not necessary anymore. Many authors who have been traditionally published are being crunched out of a system that didn’t value many of them in the first place. I’m not saying this is true across the board, but we wouldn’t be seeing author after author after traditionally published author publishing their backlist and their frontlist on their own.
Its just good business to look at price points and more importantly listen to the consumer, who has spoken when they purchase your book. Most traditional publishers are looking at a way to increase their profit and hold onto a broken a business model. They look at their customers as the distributors. The stores selling the books, not the reader. Indie Authors are looking for ways reach their readers. People who want to enjoy their book.
When eBooks began to really hit the market, many of the eReaders were priced over 200$. What happened when the price dropped? More people bought them and are using them. Do you know what I saw at a small bookstore in the Airport today? A Kindle. I stopped and asked the sales associate if she ever sold one. She said “oh, yes. Lots. Especially this past holiday season.” Perhaps the airport bookstore might be replaced with a gadget store. Buy a Kindle with 1 or 2 free books of your choice on it…the future is now.
Bob said:
Authors have to do their jobs. So if I’m going to do their job, I’m taking their cut.
Our motto at Who Dares Wins Publishing is: Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. Traditional publishers are not leading. They’re not even crawling forward. So get the hell out of the way.
Yeehaw, Bob & Jenni.
Will you be able to do images in Kindle? Besides the itty bitty cover, I mean.
Love the motto and the idea of getting paid for doing the promo, too. Keeping a bigger profit of a lower selling price has quite a bit of appeal. Recently bought an ebook for <$5. It's really poorly edited–can't read it. For that price? Oh well.
$15-25 for a so-so book? Sorry. Now I'm annoyed.
And shame on the big name sites selling ebooks for (close to) as much as the print version. So not right.
Civil War fiction series? Sounds excellent!
I struggle with the price point as well. I worry that selling an e-book for $.99 makes me seem like a discount author. Yet I also know that at that price, the book will sell better and I’ll reach more readers. So I offer the first book in my series at $.99 and I offer one of my thrillers at that price. Both are designed to get new readers to try my work, and it’s effective. I sell my other e-books at $2.99 to make a profit.
And Penelope, just because a copy of the books sells for a dollar doesn’t mean the value of my year’s worth of work is a dollar. If I sell a million copies at a dollar apiece, the value of my work is a million dollars. Volume is just as important in book selling as it is in other industries. Except with e-books, after you’ve earned back your production investment, everything else is profit…because there are no material or distribution costs. Publishing is a business, not an art.
LJ has summed it up. Yes, I think .99 for something I put a year into isn’t much, but the key is to reach as many readers as possible.
And the last line is what ‘artists’ who want to make a living have to accept– it’s business too.
Every author I know isn’t in it to become rich. We want to make money for one simple reason– to keep doing what we love. Write.
LJ….that is a very good point. I am personally a huge supporter of self-publishing in digital format. I think it’s fabulous that authors have the potential for more control over their publishing careers.
I just have a bad feeling about this “under a buck” pricing thing. How low can we go? Don’t think for a minute that someone isn’t going to start pushing it lower and lower. Authors who are desperate to sell books and think the “bargain basement” mentality will do the trick. Readers are not interested in the fine points of making a profit in the publishing business. They are looking for a good deal.
There are two points here that concern me. One is that most folks who self-pub will NOT sell a million copies. And the second is that many authors are still reluctant to self publish. It is a daunting undertaking for many people. I am an advocate for ALL authors…those who are willing to jump into this self-publishing adventure, and those who are more comfortable with a traditional path to publication. I just hope .99 books can support everyone…and I’m not sure they can.
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It is true that not all self pub authors will sell millions at any price, but it certainly increases their chances. It is also true that .99 books can’t support everyone, but the bottom line in this business is that traditional publishing isn’t supporting its authors anymore. More and more authors are being dropped, smaller advances, shorter print runs… and low ebook royalty rates. I’m not saying that traditional publishing is a bad thing, not at all. I think for many it is the perfect fit. I’m simply stating a well known fact, publishing is in crisis.
The .99 eBook is part of a marketing tool. We’re having a sale, on two books, out of around 20 books. Its business.
Absolutely correct– most authors who self-publish will fail. The success ratio in self-publishing will be about the same as it was in traditional publishing. 99.9% won’t go anywhere, essentially because the books aren’t very good and/or the author isn’t willing to put the time and energy into promotion. The difference is, instead of agents and editors sorting it out, it will be readers. So an author can price a book at a dime, but if readers don’t like it, they aren’t going to sell very many. Remember the Yugo? It was a very inexpensive car. Had four tires, an engine– looked like a car. A lot of things look like a book right now, but are going to go the way of the Yugo.
The discussion of price point is always interesting.
When I posted my new novella over a year ago, I posted it for .99 cents because it was a novella, and an experiment. It has not sold a million copies, but it sold pretty well and people seemed to enjoy it.
When I posted my full-length paranormal mystery, Past Tense, the initial price was $3.79, which many readers told me they thought was still a deal. I lowered that to 2.99, and it continued to sell, then I ran a special before Xmas at .99 — and that was my lowest sales cycle. Who knows if that was about price, the economy, or whatever, but it has resumed strong sales at a price of 1.99, where I will leave it.
Dangerous Magic, a re-edited book I wrote years ago that many readers could have read on my website in a rougher form, I posted for .99 and will leave it at that because it was an “early on” book, and something that folks could have read, but might like to re-read, and I didn’t think it was right to charge the same price I would charge for a new novel.
I hope to have one new erotic novella and the second mystery in the Sophie Turner series up on Kindle and Nook this year, and I have to think through how I will approach pricing, but I have to admit, I will probably not every price a brand new book at less than 2.99, and a novella at 1.99. The profits at that point are respectable, and for me, .99 cents is a sale price or a price I put on something that is perhaps not new, or maybe a short story (though Barry Eisler priced a short story at 2.99 and no one seemed to complain).
I don’t think we need to (or should) set the expectations for ebook pricing at low prices, but at FAIR prices. How any one author decides what is fair is up to them, and I’m sure readers will let them know.
Agency pricing is no fair because for the higher price, we don’t even get to loan or truly own the book, among other things — that is what will ultimately be damaging. If you buy my self-pub book, the way I see it, it’s yours and you have the right to loan it — please do — share it with a friend — that is your book. Publishers want to “rent” us books for very high prices.
Anyway… I don’t know how this contributes to the discussion, but my experience so far.
Sam
Excellent Discussion! I have 2 points to add, both from micro-economics.
1. A $0.99 book doesn’t cost $0.99
2. Sales profit is more important than the number of readers
Now I’ll explain.
1. A $0.99 book doesn’t cost $0.99
I want to buy a book that has a sales price of $0.99. Great. Now I have to log-in to Amazon (or whereever), take the time to add the book to my shopping cart and enter my credit card information, trust that my information is safe, download the book, and pull it up in my e-reader, hoping it downloaded correctly. All those steps and emotions have value, too. I have to work to get that book. Ninety-nine cents may not have much value to me, but the time and effort do.
Before I make the choice to engage in that purchase, I have to ask myself not just whether the book is worth at least $0.99 but also whether the effort is worth a book that costs $0.99. I may be less likely to pay the full cost for a book with a $0.99 sales price for a book with a $10.00 price tag.
The perceived value of the book has to be greater than or equal to the perceived value of the full cost, monetary and otherwise. If I think it is, I’ll buy it.
The question this raises for the self-publishing author, therefore, is “How do you make the buyer think your $0.99 book is worth the full cost of purchase?”
2. Sales profit is more important than the number of readers
Let’s do some math. I sell 100 books at $1 during a one-week period. I now have 100 readers and have made $100. Now I lower the price to $0.50. During the next week, I sell 175 books. Yippie! I have more 75 more readers this week than last week. The lower price resulted in more sales. That’s great! But wait a minute. I made only $87.50. I increased the number of readers, but I’m making less profit for all my hard work writing that book. That’s no good.
Here’s a real example. I have one e-book that I sell on Amazon for $0.99 (profit = $0.35 / book). If I sell 50 copies in a month, I make $17.50. I have another e-book that I sell on Amazon for $9.95 (profit = $6.96 per book). I sell about 1 of this book for every 4 of the other book. Thus, if I sell 50 of the lower-cost book, I will likely sell 12 of this higher-priced book, for a profit of $83.52. I sell 38 more copies of the $0.99 book, but make $66.02 more profit selling fewer copies of the higher-priced book. As we can see, more sales alone does not equal more profit.
Here’s the issue. Higher prices generally mean fewer sales, though you get more profit from each sale, and lower prices generally mean more sales, though you get less profit from each sale. When we think about this, we find that a price point exists where we maximize total profit. We don’t make the most sales (lowest price), and we don’t make the most profit per sale (highest price). But we do make the most money overall for our efforts.
We can find this point by tracking profits and prices carefully. I can lower the price 10% and see how my profits change. Do my total profits increase when I lower the price? If so, I need to try lowering it a bit more. Do my total profits decrease? If so, I need to try raising the price.
There is a rather complex formula for determining the perfect price point, but this practical approach works well if applied over time. Eventually, I find the approximate price where I get the most profit for all my sales combined. (I’ll need to repeat this experiment in 6 months or in a year to make sure the price is still about right. Conditions do change in the market, which will affect that price point.)
The question for the self-publishing author is not “How do you get the most readers?” The question is “Do you know what sales price will result in the most profit?”
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Overall, I think it’s important to keep in mind that, more often than not, the .99 cent price point is a promotional tool. It’s not intended to be the long-term price of ever book it’s assigned to. Bob and Jenni are trying this out to see where it gets them. With, as Jenni points out, only two of their books.
The biggest thing our industry’s always struggled with, IMHO, is that this is somehow a zero sum game. All or nothing. Win or loose. We’re into so many shades of gre now, it’s time to settle down and see what can be done to figure this out. It’s not NY Only anymore. It’s not Indie Only. Self Pubs aren’t going to rule the world–not the ones who don’t hit it big.
But there’s more opportunity than ever before to find your niche and find a way to announce the release of your book or your series or a new direction in your writing career to the reading world–particularly through promotional tools like a .99 cent book price. THAT’s the point, I think. That we have options. That we have the power to set our own pricing and see if it works for us the way id did Lisa Gardner. That we’re at the wheel in this process, instead of the back seat (or the trunk ;o).
Price discussion is, as always, of real interest to me…as a reader with a voracious appetite for more books to read, I don’t want to go bankrupt funding my habit. I also love reading stories that are well-edited, well-written and, most importantly, keep me engaged. I find it simply unbelievable and frankly intolerable that Random House has chosen to follow the Agency Model. And you can be sure that on Amazon I will continue tagging ebooks in an appropriate manner as an outlet for my displeasure at Agency Model Tactics. IMHO, this concerted effort using AM to artificially inflate prices {of ebooks} is an unwelcome intrusion and I frankly hope it blows up in their greedy, short-sighted faces. My dollars, my loyalty goes with the small houses and indies.
There are also greater resources available now for Indies to find quality editors for their work without having to forfeit their firstborn child in the process. It no longer has to be a given that an independently published book must, by definition, be a poorly edited book. Quite the contrary, as I am seeing an overall trend of improvement in this area. Now there are options available for authors to hire good editors at reasonable prices – again research is key.
I am so glad to have read your post and seen the empirical evidence you outlined. It’s obviously a topic worthy of thoughtful debate and scrutiny. I’m paying it forward by putting a link to this article on my blog. Wishing you continued success.
Laurie
http://lauriethoughts-Reviews.blogspot.com
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Interesting article. And now that I know you’ve priced some of your books at 99 cents, I think I ought to go buy one or two!