Tonight, crowdsourcing. Or a social experiment. What I mean is I want your opinion.
I was talking to someone the other day about the way my novels are languishing at Amazon (my big exposure through Christianity Today the other day resulted in a total of 20 copies sold), and I mentioned that I’m asking $2.99 for a download. My friend suggested maybe that’s too little. Perhaps people assume that a $2.99 book isn’t to be taken seriously.
Baen is charging $6.99 for The Year of the Warrior.
I take it for granted anyone who reads this blog and is in a position to buy an e-book has already gotten their own $2.99 copy. So you have nothing to lose by giving me your honest opinion. Do you think the books would sell better at $4.99? $5.99?
I figure we could run a sale once or twice a year. Hard to do a sale at $2.99, unless you just make it free.
Tell me what you think.
Charge $6.99. I have found at times that charging more foes get more sales. I could charge $4 for my wooden swords, but people would assume they are cheap and not buy them. I sell them well at $8.
I sell drinking horns more quickly at $15 than at $12, and at Høstfest the $20 horns sold better than the $15 horns.
Kelsey, where do you sell those drinking horns? Do you have a website? 🙂
I sell them on my website, here: http://spindleshuttleandneedle.com/shop/viking-drinking-horn/
I also sell them at Viking events.
There is this thinking that if something is sold for cheap that it lacks quality. I think the same people that spend 3 bucks because they find out about your work will also spend a few more.
Kelsey, thanks for the ground-level perspective. It’s remarkable.
For myself, I definitely think this way for non-fiction books. If a good-looking e-book sells for $12, I assume it’s probably as good as it looks. If it’s lower priced, I wonder about it–generally speaking. For fiction, I don’t assume the same thing. I don’t buy much though, so low prices may influence me more. I’d probably buy the $12 and $15 horns just as quickly as the $15-20, because I wanted them. We’ve been getting a pound of rice for $0.02 every week at one grocery store because they keep giving us the coupons to do it. We don’t assume the rice is rancid b/c it’s almost free.
I can’t say what my opinion of your novels would be if I didn’t have a relationship with you. Maybe if we found other solid novels that sold at these prices and put them in a gallery of suspects.
Hard to tell, Generally, if a fiction ebook is more than $7, I’m not interested. It’s why I haven’t been reading Overstreet’s books despite the rave reviews. (suppose I should check again to see if the price has dropped).
The point about quality still holds, I would be concerned about a $3 price point. That’s where a lot of the novellas are at, and I’d be afraid I’d be buying a novella without even looking at the estimated length on the page.
You hooked me because Wolf Time was free and it convinced me to check out your other books (and your blog, though that isn’t bringing in $). I believe you have improved as an author since, so you might consider trying a similar trick again with another book.
Frankly, you should make more selling one for $7 and giving another away for free than selling tow for $3 each (though my ignorance of how authors get paid may be showing). The ones who just took the free one and never came back probably wouldn’t pay $3 for it.
As other posters implied, most people are willing to pay for quality. The problem (IMHO) is, it’s harder to tell if an ebook is quality than a physical object.
For me, the barrier from $3-$7 is smaller than the barrier of actually paying for a book from an author I’m unsure of.
Pray it all works out well, whatever you do.
From my Google+ writers’ community:
Erin Eymard 10:45 >>
Yes, it does influence my decision to buy. I will not pay $9.99 for an ebook, no matter how well written. For $9.99, I can and would get a paperback book.
For me, $2.99 is the sweet spot but I have no issue paying up to $5.99 for an ebook from an author that I enjoy.
Vanessa MacLellan 11:05 AM >>
I had friends buy ebooks for 13 bucks more than the soft cover …. I probably wouldn’t spend that, and I think 9.99 for an ebook is too much too. 2.99 seems way too low. I’m not sure what the happy medium is. $5?
Justin Hebert 11:33 AM >>
I’ve spent $9.99 on ebooks before, but only for authors that I know. My family and I live in a small apartment, and the only books I buy in physical form anymore are either books that are unavailable as ebooks, or those whose ebook price is something ridiculous like $14.99 (I patently refuse in this case – I’ll wait for a price drop).
For Indy ebooks, my ceiling is usually around $4.99, it just depends on its popularity, reviews, and of course whether I’m familiar with the author.
More from my Google+ question:
Erin Eymard 11:47 AM >>
I definitely wouldn’t spend more than 5 bucks on an author I’m not familiar with unless someone I really trusted (there are like only 5 of those peeps when it comes to books) recommended it to me.
Brooke Johnson 11:47 AM >>
I very rarely spend more than $6 for an ebook. Most of the time, the hardcover is available for less than $15 and the paperback for less than $10. I prefer paper, so if the price of the paper version is only a few bucks more than the ebook, I usually go for that.
david locicero 12:22 PM >>
It depends. Fiction or non-fiction? Have I read the author before or not? Do I need the information (in the case of non-fiction), or only want it? Are there competitive books available for less?
Almost every ebook I’ve bought that cost less than $2.99 was absolute crap. So I avoid those. For fiction I have spent as much as $9.99 for an ebook, if I have read and liked the author before. For non-fiction, I’ve spent as much as $17.00 for an ebook because I needed the information it contained and there were no cheaper competitors.
I price my ebooks at roughly one half the price of the paperback version of the book. My books (both fiction and non-fiction) sell as paperbacks between $6 and $16. so my ebooks are priced between $2.99 and $7.99. It seems to work for me.
Nathan Lowell 12:40 PM >>
“Does the price of an ebook influence your opinion of it before you read it?”
Yes. If it’s above $6.99, it tells me the publisher doesn’t think they’ll sell very many so they need to recoup their expenses with just a few sales. If they don’t believe in it, why should I?
Lower prices mean shorter works, usually. (I don’t read anything where the sample size is 100 locations or less.) I’ve read a lot of $2.99 books and some of them were pretty darn good. I pick up 99cent promo books occasionally because the sample is good enough to get me hooked before the “buy me” link at the end.
At prices under $5, the criterion for purchase is not the price but the quality of the cover, blurb, and sample. If the sample is too short – or the writing too much not to my liking – I’ll skip it regardless of the price. I won’t see the sample if the blurb is stupid. I won’t see the blurb if the cover is a muddy mess.