Indie Books: What Price Is Right?

Dean Wesley Smith addressed a question that has been on my mind: what effect will the recent settlements regarding agency pricing have on the cost of books? DWS says they're going to go up, perhaps way up.

Pricing for customers of electronic books will go up as this settles out over the next few years. Even with stores discounting some titles, ebook prices really can’t do anything else but go up.

Why are book prices going to increase?

... I am being scary simple and general here for the sake of keeping this short and understandable to those who don’t much care.

So now the government has come in and said to the big publishers, “No, no, no. You can’t all agree to do this at the same time.” So now the publishers are being forced to back up and allow retailers to discount what they want, as it always should have been.

In response to that, publishers are raising their “suggested retail prices” expecting retail stores to discount. Some retailers will, some will not.

Some books will be discounted, some won’t. And the amount of discounts by the retailers will vary from moment to moment and book to book and agreement to agreement.

All this is going to cause all kinds of very strange price benchmarks for books. Prices like $10.14 or $12.64 for electronic books. It’s going to have readers who are used to set and standard prices shaking their heads, that’s for sure.

And it’s going to make for some interesting shopping for book buyers, who now can shop around for the best deals. Again, as it always should have been in this capitalistic country.

So what should indie writers price their books at? Here's what DWS recommends:

Novels
- Front list, meaning brand new. Over 50,000 words. $7.99
- Shorter front list novels, meaning 30,000 to 50,000 words. $6.99
- Backlist novels, meaning already published by a traditional publisher. $6.99

Short Books
- Short books, meaning stories from 8,000 words to 30,000 words. $3.99

Short Stories
- Short stories … 4,000 to 8,000 words. $2.99
- Short stories under 4,000 double with another bonus story… $2.99

Collections
- 5 stories $4.99
- 10 stories $7.99

Dean also suggests, and I agree that this makes good sense, publishing a trade paper edition along with your ebook, even if you don't expect to sell many paper books. Why? Because it shows readers how much less expensive the ebook price is and makes them feel like they're getting a deal--which they are!

You can read the rest of Dean Wesley Smith's article here: The New World of Publishing: Pricing 2013

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Photo credit: See-ming Lee

How To Sell 100 Books Per Day: 6 Things You Need To Do

Joe Konrath has just written an excellent blog post called Zero Sum. I'm going to blog tomorrow about what he says about the race to the bottom but what I'd like to talk about now is this statement of his:

They [writers] need 100 sales a day at $2.99 to live very well.

My reaction: Yes! 100 sales a day seems doable. Sortof. So, here it is, six things you need to do in order to sell 100 books a day:

1) Write a lot of good stories
This point, though obvious, bears restating. Part of putting out a good book is making sure it has been edited, proofed and professionally formatted. (Joe mentions that he uses www.52novels.com for formatting his books.)

Even if unedited, unproofed and poorly formatted books will sell--we've all read ebooks like this--at the very least making sure your books look professional will give you a competitive advantage.

2) Have a great product description and a professional cover
This is self-explanatory. Joe recommends Carl Graves.

One thing I've found helpful in writing a product description is Nathan Bransford's advice for writing queries. Nathan gives a helpful paint/write-by-number formula for doing this that got me started and, often, getting something half-decent on the page, something you can work with, is half the battle.

3) Price your book right
It's devilishly hard to determine what is a good price for a book. Joe writes, "Currently I'm $3.99 for novels, $2.99 for novellas (over 10k words) and story collections, and 99 cents for short stories. But this isn't set in stone."

How ebooks should be priced is a hotly debated issue. One thing I will say is, given the changes in Amazon's ranking algorithm, it's not worth pricing any novel-length work below $2.99. How high you want to go is up to you.

4) Promote your books 
Have free giveaways to encourage reviews, write guest posts to announce sales, sell your books on different platforms, and so on. Those are a few of the things things you can do to promote your books. Here are some things Joe recommends not bothering with:

1. Advertising. It doesn't work on me, so I don't use it on other people. That's a cardinal rule of mine. I only use something or believe it works if I do it as a consumer.

2. Social media. Occasional tweets of Facebook announcements are fine. At most, once a week. Maybe once a day if you have a new release, but end it after a few days. Otherwise people get sick of you.

3. Publicity. I've already blogged that getting my name in the press doesn't lead to sales. You probably don't need a publicist.

4. Spamming. I have a newsletter, and use it a few times a year. I don't use it everytime I upload something new to Kindle. And I don't pimp my work on other peoples' blog or forums unless invited to do so, or there's a section for it.

Joe ends by writing:

I want to end this blog entry by telling writers: Don't Be Afraid. Yes, the future will be different. Yes, things will change. But there will always be a need for storytellers, and if you hold onto your rights, you'll be in a good position to exploit those rights no matter what the future holds.

I think this is an exciting time to be a writer. New possibilities for sales and distribution are opening up, writers are getting the lion's share of the royalties on most of their book sales and as a group we're starting to think more like business people and are taking charge of our careers. Go us!

Remember, in order to write a lot of good books we have to follow Heinlein's first rule: Writer's write. I hope you all have a productive day. Cheers!

Related reading:
- Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester
- Query Tracker: Keep Track Of Your Stories
- 10 Reasons Why Stories Get Rejected

Former Random House CEO Agrees With Amazon About Ebook Pricing

When asked what the price of an ebook should be, former Random House CEO Alberto Vitale (1989 - 2002) replied:

The price of the eBook should be $9.99 and down, I am convinced of that. Some publishers who have adopted the agency model are pricing them at $12.99 and $14.99 or more, and this is way too high. They might sell a lot of books at that price, but they would sell a hell of a lot more if they would price them at $9.99.

I agree! Read the rest of the interview here: Ex-RH CEO Alberto Vitale Still Has a Lot to Say About Publishing.

Related reading:
- Amazon To Acquire Dorchester Publishing
- Amazon Award-Winner Regina Sirois & The Problems Of Indie Distribution
- Amazon's KDP Select: Another Author Shares Her Experience

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