Authors, Ebook Backlists, and the Sweet Spot

[patti_oshea]

On Twitter this weekend we were talking about books and the conversation had me mentioning a couple of mystery series written by a romance writer. There are romances in both of the series, but they're a subplot, not the main plot. Thinking about these books made me wonder if they were in ebook format yet or not. I went over to take a look.

And

Comments

Someone didn't do their research

[lostseraphin]

You're right Patti! What was this author (not to mention the agent) thinking? Places like lulu.com and amazon's createspace gives authors the ability to e-publish for 70% royalties or more. I've always had a thing about selling a digital file for large amounts of money simply because most e-books are under 1 megabyte. Valuing an e-book for a brand new author (or backlogged author) should never be at the same pricing point as a bestselling author. How would anyone justify that? But selling an e-book cheaper than 2.99 does diminish, as you said, the value of having spent so much work on the project to begin with. Then again... if the book hasn't sold much, a good pricing point is something that'll attract the experimental reader who isn't opposed at trying new things.

I just recently read John Locke's book about how he sold 1 million e-books and he kept a pricing point at $0.99 per novel. Granted that's only a return of approx 350,000 but I don't think he is complaining about it.

The e-book market is an interesting thing.

Re: Someone didn't do their research

[patti_oshea]

For me, the sweet spot is about finding the right price point. It's not $8.99, not for me, not for fiction. As for the $.99 price point, from what I've read it worked for a while, but now so many people are selling for that amount that it's become ineffective. Too many titles mean everyone gets lost in the crowd.