Is 99 Cents Too Low For An Indie Ebook?

I used to think 99 cents was a good price for indie books. Sure, they're worth more than 99 cents but if you want to sell a lot of books then it seemed reasonable to price them affordably, and at 99 cents a lot of folks don't think twice before clicking the "download" button.

Things have changed.

Two things happened. First, Amazon changed its ranking algorithm to favor higher priced books and therefore 99 cent books no longer have the competitive edge they once did. Second, I think the novelty of being able to buy a book for 99 cents has worn off and consumers don't download 99 cent books as readily.

For years Dean Wesley Smith said an author should never price her novel at 99 cents. I now agree with him. Yesterday he posted a comment one of his readers had submitted and I've reproduced a small part of that, below. I think this is a fantastic analogy.

He [an pricing professional] would look at all the short stories and say ‘It takes 15 minutes to read? And it was fun? Okay. charge 5 bucks.” And when writers squawked in horror, he would say “Starbucks sells fancy coffees for $5 that take 15 minutes to drink. They sell millions every day. Did you enjoy the story as much as the coffee? Yes? Well, no problem.”

And the writers would come back with “but there was actual substance in the coffee… cream and coffee beans and sugar…” and the he would respond with “yeah, and if I really like the story, I can read it again. I can’t drink the coffee again. I can lend the story to my friends. I can’t say to my friends, ‘gee you should taste this coffee, it was really good, you can try it when I’m done with it.’

He would tell you that it is not good practice to set anything, no matter how ‘small’, at regular price at the very bottom of the price structure.

The bottom price should be reserved for sales exclusively, and used only in an integrated, strategic way to give you more sales traction and build your brand.

If people said “oh, well I’m new, and I don’t have name recognition so I have to sell cheap to make sales” he’d say, no. Set the price you want to regularly sell at. From that price have sales, or other promotions that give an incentive to the consumer to try your new stuff. You’re telling the consumer that you know they are taking a bit of a risk on a new, unknown quantity, so a price break makes it more appealing. Once they’ve tried your stuff, then they know if the regular price is worth it to them.

You are always educating the consumer as to what your product is worth. The regular price will come to be perceived as its true value. You don’t want to set that too low. You steal from the consumer the thrill of getting a deal, you steal from yourself the flexibility to build and expand your brand appropriately.

Read the rest over at Dean's blog: The New World of Publishing: Book Pricing from Another Perspective.

Related reading:
-The Vandal's 10 Ways To Promote Your Book
- 7 Tips On How To Launch A Book Without Losing Your Mind
- 5 Book Review Blogs

No Kindles Allowed At The Hay Festival

Why are no Kindles allowed at the Hay Festival? Apparently it "goes against the ethos of a town to have a machine you can read a story on (From the transcription of the video No Kindles Allowed, see below)."

Edit (June 2, 2012): See the bottom of this article for an update to the situation.

I had never heard of the Hay Festival before, which I feel a bit silly about now since apparently it's quite famous.

The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales for ten days from May to June.... [T]he festival was described by Bill Clinton in 2001 as "The Woodstock of the mind".
- Hay Festival

Ian McEwan once gave a great line about why he previews his novels here [at the Hay Festival]. He joked - 'I don't do research anymore, I ask the audience at Hay'.
- Hay Festivals

Today is June 1, so the Hay Festival should be in full swing. Passive Guy came across a video that looks as though it was shot at Hay-on-Wye, where the festival is taking place. As of this writing, the video can be found in the hayontv YouTube channel.

I've embedded the video and included a transcription, below.



My transcription:

(Woman sitting in a bookstore looking at the camera.)

When you drive into a small American town you often see, by towns side, apart from the number of people that live there, is that it's a nuclear free zone, or something like that, because the local councils have voted on that.

We would like Hay to be a Kindle free zone. We really feel it goes against the ethos of a town to have a machine you can read a story on. The book is the thing in this town. And we would like to really ban them [Kindles] and treat people coming with Kindles quite harshly.

(Woman walks through bookstore and addresses a man. The woman is now off camera.)

 Woman: I heard you actually told somebody off the other day for sitting outside the next door shop reading from a Kindle.

Man: Well, I was gasped in surprise and I did restrain myself from grabbing it and jumping up and down on it and then slashing it to bis with my lightsaber.

(Laughter from off camera.)

Man: So in fact the person holding it was quite lucky they escaped with their Kindle in one piece.

Woman: So no Kindles allowed at this years festival?

Man: No Kindles. Anybody seen with a Kindle will be unceremoniously dumped on the wayside.

I'd like to stress that this story is unconfirmed. It certainly could be someone's idea of joke. I have contacted the Hay Festival in an effort to confirm the story, but I haven't heard back from them.

I should mention that when I looked through the hayontv YouTube channel I found this video of a hiker openly using her Kindle. She was interviewed but appears to have come through the experience no worse for wear.

If I hear anything else about Kindles not being allowed at the Hay Festival, I'll be sure to update this post.

June 2nd Update
I just heard back from the folks at Hay Tourism. Here is the reply:

Thank you for your email.

Please ignore the foolishness on the video.  Mr & Mrs Addyman have a couple of bookshops in Hay so I can see they would rather people purchased books rather than people having Kindles.

I agree in that nothing can replace a good book but for convenience, especially when on holiday when one has to consider baggage weight etc., a Kindle is ideal. 

So please do not let such things prevent you from visiting us here in Hay - I am quite sure it was all done, as you say, tongue in cheek - and bring your Kindle!!

Kind Regards.
Pat

So it seems the video expressed the sentiments of two individuals rather than the town, or the Hay Festival Committee. I am glad. It looks like a terrific festival, one I would love to attend one year.

I can understand the desperation bookstore owners must feel in a town where six bookstores have closed in the past year (this is according to the second video I listed, see above).

Here are two articles about the situation at the Hay Festival:
- The man who would be 'king' of Hay-on-Wye
- Kill the Kindle! In home of the Hay Festival, bookshop boss goes to war on gadget that 'turns readers into robots'

Also, there is a lively discussion going on over at the Passive Voice Blog.

"No Kindles Allowed At The Hay Festival," copyright© 2012 by Karen Woodward.

How Many Books A Year Should I Write?

Author Elizabeth S. Craig talks about how many books a year she writes (3 or 4), why she writes at that pace, and what her schedule is like.

I just don’t think we can make a living off a book a year if we’re midlist authors. (Actually…I know we can’t. Unless your book deals are a whole lot better than mine are.)

Elizabeth's article is fascinating on its own, but especially when read in the light of what Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have been saying for years, that in order to make a living as a writer one needs to write more than one book a year, a lot more. But, practically, what's that like?

I wanted to let you know that writing several books a year doesn’t take that long. As I mentioned in this post, if you can write 3 1/2 pages a day, you can write three or four books a year. Even if it takes you a long time, thoughtfully considering each word and making each word resonate with meaning, you can probably manage a least two if you stay focused during your writing time.

Good to know!

So what’s it like to write that many books a year? I can let you know what it’s like for me. This is the first time I’ve really analyzed it, so it’s interesting to break it all down (for the record, since the start of 2012, I’ve written one full book and I’m now passing the halfway mark of the second. I do edit quickly and I do have either my publisher’s editors or freelance editors go over my work after I edit it.)

Elizabeth even gives us a list of pros and cons:

Good things
*You write every day and you don’t lose any story continuity.

*You don’t forget or stumble with your character’s individual voices.

*You think about your story more during the day. Plot ideas, small scenes, even just words occur to you during the day in reference to the story.

*You don’t ever get bored with what you’re writing.

*You just jump right into the story every single day. No wondering where you left off. No feeling like you’ve lost the story thread.

*Frequently you’ll get story ideas for the next book in the series while writing the book.

*Readers don’t have to wait very long between books.

*Obviously, your income is higher.

For her lists of not so good things and downright lousy things, read the rest of her article, here: What Happens After Writing 3 or 4 Books a Year

Related reading:
The Business Rusch: The “Brutal” 2000-Word Day

How to self-publish on Barnes & Noble

I want to write an ebook on how to self-publish and thought I'd motivate myself by writing one section a week and posting it here. I intended to post this article Thursday, so it's a day late, but I'm a big fan of the sentiment: "Better late than never!" :-)

Eventually, I'll write articles on how to self-publish on each major platform -- Smashwords, Amazon.com, Apple, Sony, and so on -- but I thought I would begin with Barnes & Noble. So, here we go. As always, your feedback is appreciated!


Publishing On Barnes & Noble

What is required
Only publishers can get books into Barnes & Noble's Nook Store, so you'll need a business license. In the United States information on starting up a business can be found at BusinessUSA (business.usa.gov). The website is chalk full of useful information and it's easy to navigate. In Canada, you'll need to go to your city or municipality's website.

PubIt!
Okay, so, you've got a business license and you want to publish your ebook with Barnes & Noble. What now?

First, head off to PubIt! (pubit.barnesandnoble.com) and take out a free account but be warned. In order to complete registration you'll need a U.S. bank account, a U.S. credit card and a U.S. tax id number. Also, your bank account, credit card and tax id number must be tied to a U.S. address. This would seem to indicate that only US residents can get their ebooks into the Nook Store. Not so!

Getting your books into the Nook Store though Smashwords
If you can't take out an account at PubIt!, but you want to get your ebooks into the Nook Store, you can do this through Smashwords. (Thinking about it now, I should probably have written about Smashwords before Barnes & Noble! Ah well.)

Unlike at Barnes and Noble, you do not have to be a publisher to publish through Smashwords. That said, if you want to get your book into the Apple Store or the Sony Store, your book will need to have an ISBN number, and in order to buy your own ISBN number you do need to be a publisher. If that doesn't appeal to you, don't despair! Smashwords will provide you with a free ISBN if you don't want to buy your own (see below for details).

Using Smashwords to Distribute Your Ebook
If your ebook makes it into Smashwords Premium Catalog it will be sold in the following online bookstores:

Apple -- it has iBookstores in 32 countries

Barnes & Noble

Sony

Kobo

WH Smith in the UK

FNAC

The Diesel eBook Store

eBook Eros (operated by Diesel)

Baker & Tayler (Blio and the Axis 360 library service)

As you can see, one of the premium distribution chanells is Barnes & Noble, so by getting your ebook accepted into the premium catalog at Smashwords you will, eventually, be able to get your ebook into Barnes & Noble's Nook Store.

That's about all there is to say about that except to explain Smashwords' policy on ISBN numbers. However, rather than restate Smashwords policy, I'm just going to post an except from it.

Smashwords Distribution Information Page: How Smashwords Distributes Ebooks

Will Smashwords assign me an ISBN number?
Starting March 2010, Smashwords added support for ISBN-13 numbers with our new ISBN Manager feature. We offer three ISBN options: 1. You can attach your own ISBN number to your book; 2. You can obtain a free ISBN from Smashwords that registers Smashwords as your publisher (your book must be accepted into the Premium Catalog to be eligible to receive the free ISBN), or; 3. You can select the premium ISBN from Smashwords. The Premium ISBN service,  which registers you, the author or publisher, as the publisher in the ISBN record and lists Smashwords as the distributor, is $9.95 and is available only to residents of the United States and U.S. territories, and your book must be accepted into the Premium Catalog.  For publishers outside the United States, click here for list of international ISBN agencies.

What's the difference between the Premium ISBN and the Free ISBN?  Which is better?
We recommend the FREE ISBN because it's free.  We pay for the ISBN so you don't have to.  The Premium ISBN offers no advantage over the free ISBN.  Unless you're a publisher of multiple authors, the Premium ISBN is essentially a vanity ISBN for those who feel it's important to be listed as the "publisher" in the Bowker Books in Print Database, a database few readers will ever view (most readers search for books via title and author name searches at Google and online bookstores).  Of all the Smashwords retailers, only Sony polls Bowker for data in the ISBN record.  The FREE ISBN is available to any Smashwords author, anywhere in the world.  Although it registers Smashwords as the "publisher" in the Bowker record, we are not your publisher.  This designation is due only to the legacy limitations of Bowker's categorization options for ISBNs.  If Smashwords is listed as your publisher in the ISBN record, it in no way limits your ownership of your book, and in no way makes us your publisher.  

Can I use a Smashwords ISBN elsewhere?
We do not recommend this.  Smashwords ISBNs are provided as an exclusive service benefit for authors and publishers who utilize Smashwords' distribution services.  To use a Smashwords ISBN elsewhere, or to utilize Smashwords as a free vending machine for ISBNs, goes against the spirit of why we make this benefit available to our authors and clients.  To do so would also potentially create situations where your book is listed incorrectly.  If you plan to utilize an ISBN outside of Smashwords distribution, it's best to go to ISBN registrar and obtain your own.

Do I need an ISBN to publish on Smashwords?
No, you don't need an ISBN, though your book will be more successful if you have one because you'll enjoy broader distribution.  Why? Sony and Apple require ISBNs.

Clear as mud? Let me try to summarize.

A) If you ARE a publisher and live in the US:
- Head over to Barnes & Noble's PubIt! page and take out an account, then follow their simple and easy instructions and publish your ebook. (We'll talk about formatting your ebook for publication with PubIt@ later in this series.)

B) If you ARE a publisher but don't live in the US:
- Head over to Smashwords and publish your book through them, being careful to indicate that you want Barnes & Noble as one of your distribution channels. Eventually -- in a few weeks -- your book will show up on the Nook Store shelves.

If you are NOT a publisher:
- Same as for (B), above. If you want an ISBN number for your book, Smashwords will assign one to your book for you free of charge (see above for the details).

I hope that made some sense, there is SO much to cover in this area! Eventually I'll get through it.

Thanks for reading!

Photo Credit: techshout

Related Articles:
Publishing With Smashwords: What can Smashwords do for me as a writer?