Maybe publicity doesn’t lead to book sales. Maybe an author sitting on the couch for seven minutes with Gretchen Carlson on Fox News doesn’t sell 10,000 of his books. Are book sales the whole ballgame?
Elsewhere on the web, Lindsay Buroker asks what’s a good price for ebooks? Are new authors pricing their books at $0.99 hurting everyone?
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
We respect your privacy. Would you like to accept some freshly baked cookies?
Websites store cookies to enhance functionality and personalise your experience. You can manage your preferences, but blocking some cookies may impact site performance and services.
Essential cookies enable basic functions and are necessary for the proper function of the website.
These cookies are needed for adding comments on this website.
These cookies are used for managing login functionality on this website.
Statistics cookies collect information anonymously. This information helps us understand how visitors use our website.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that tracks and analyzes website traffic for informed marketing decisions.
Service URL: policies.google.com (opens in a new window)
Marketing cookies are used to follow visitors to websites. The intention is to show ads that are relevant and engaging to the individual user.
A video-sharing platform for users to upload, view, and share videos across various genres and topics.
Service URL: www.youtube.com (opens in a new window)
I see a small bump in sales every time a blogger plugs Troll Valley, but have been frustrated not to see anything like momentum building. Plugs have been slowing down now, and sales have dwindled to almost none. We’ve sold a little more than 100 copies of Troll Valley so far. I had expected better.
Yeah, that is a little sad. Let’s pray about it.
The blogger discusses per book pricing as if that were the only issue. The comments also bring in the reputation of the author, publisher and those recommending a particular book. All these add value, justifying a higher per book price. The part of the equation that isn’t getting much attention is the effect of pricing on the supply/demand curve. A higher volume of low priced items can generate higher total revenues than a low volume of a higher priced item.
One of my first jobs was managing a retail greengrocer’s shop. We had a pretty standard margin for most of our items. Since we built our business on stocking the highest quality produce in the neighborhood, I generally avoided buying the cheapest fruit. We paid what we had to pay to get the best fruit we could find. But every day we sought out a special, something we could pile high and sell cheap. If peaches were regularly available for, say, 35 cents each, I would price them at 50 cents and sell a dozen trays a day. That would generate $100 in gross sales. But if the price dropped to 25 cents, I might buy 100 trays and put them out front at 3 for a dollar, contributing about $500 to that day’s sales. The tricky part was guessing how much price sensitivity was in the market. Some items would sell pretty much the same quantity no matter what the price was within a certain range. Other items would take off like a rocket with only a slight shift in price and a bit of promotion.
That’s part of the expertise that the big publishers bring to the table. They have the resources to study market sensitivity so they can make better predictions of which price points will generate the greatest total revenue.
I hear you, but handselling and direct recommendation appear to sell books better than any other method. Reviews, as I think the first link says, have a cumulative effect with some of them being larger snowballs than most. So publishers may have access and resources to gauge the market, but that still may not give them the critical advantage they should have as big players. Reputation may sell their stock better than price.
Lars,
I’m shocked. Seriously. Troll Valley rocked. I will be praying for that.
Cumulative effect is key. The one principle I took away from my Jr. College Advertising class thirty years ago was that it takes at least seven points of contact before you make an impression. That’s why the big companies spread their ads over TV, Radio, Newsprint, Billboards, etc. It also explains why the one big event is not enough. It needs to be one drop in a bucket with a lot of drops.
That makes a lot of sense.