Since the Amazon scuffle of earlier this year, there’s been a lot of movement on the Amazon Kindle forum about prices. I’ve read plenty of the posts, and seen authors adjust prices, and try to find the sweet spot, but I’m still left wondering: What is that sweet-spot price that everyone is looking for?
It’s probably FREE, but even then I’ve seen plenty of readers complain about the free books because they spent time downloading it only to think it was rubbish or lacking in something.
I agree that ebooks should never ever cost the same as the hardback, or even the paperback. It’s completely justifiable to say that most ebooks ARE overpriced. The publishers defend themselves by making out that there’s lots of work involved with ebooks and trying to push the cost of editing, proofing, etc over onto them too, but the trouble is that most readers probably see the ebook as a by-product. The book has been written, edited, proofed and given a cover for the print editions, so surely the digital edition is just a bit of tweaking and formatting? I do agree that the amount of work that goes into an ebook, when there is already a print version being made, is fairly minimal, but remember that not all ebooks have print counterparts. Yes, I’m talking about us darling indie authors and our ebook-only stories. While I can’t defend publishers for the prices they put on ebooks, I can’t defend those that want to pay pence for the ebook either.
Readers do seem to expect to pay rock-bottom prices these days. Yes, the economic downturn is probably partly to blame, and another portion can be assigned to those people in print who drive the prices up to ten dollars, but not all ebooks can be free, or priced at a level where an author won’t actually make a profit.
I think when readers purchase books, they need to consider the big picture. There’s much more than just the editing cost, the cover cost, etc to consider. There’s how much time the author spent writing the story for example, or planning out those little details that make it a refreshing read. It’s about the vast number of times they visited Starbucks (guilty) to write that novel. The cost of printing it out for editing it. A lot of blood, sweat and, very likely, tears went into it too. So based on that, as an author, I can’t understand any reader who insists that the 150,000 word ebook they want to purchase should be less than two dollars just because it is an ebook.
I try to be realistic with my prices, and often drop the prices of stories that have celebrated their second birthday, but the sheer number of people campaigning for 99 cent stories or stories under two dollars, slightly cripples a lot of authors efforts. We can’t all sell books for under a dollar. It just isn’t feasible (especially when so many people distribute them for free on torrents too!).
Some authors go by page count, but I like to go by word count, or what length book it would be as a paperback, and price it accordingly.
I think it’s totally reasonable to have a short story, or short novella, at 99 cents. A novella of say, 20-40,000 words could happily sell for a cost of $1.99 (that’s half the cost of a cup of coffee) because less time has been spent writing and editing. A novella of 40,000 to say a novel of 60,000 could be $2.99. A novel, I think should be $3.99… minimum. If you’re talking about my 150,000 word example, I would go as far as $4.49 or $4.99, as the print counterpart would cost at least $7.99 (or, ahem, £7.99 in the UK! that’s $12.50)
I think they’re quite reasonable prices. They accommodate all of the factors for editing, writing, proofing, planning, and making the formats and cover etc.
Of course, even I would choke if asked to pay $4.99 for a 15,000 word short story (as seen in a few places online).
Ebooks to me should be a few dollars cheaper than their print counterparts, but not free (unless they’re promotional) or priced so low that the author won’t ever break even on them.
What do you think?
