Read KV Taylor's brilliant post about pricing to understand my inspiration.
Back in the summer of 1988, my brother and I started a lawn service. He'd taken care of several lawns when he was in high school in the late '70s/early '80s, and figured I needed a job. I was fresh out of seventh grade and wanted a Nintendo (original 8-bit variety).
Our base price? $5 a lawn. The going rate at the time started at $10. Of course we charged more for bigger lawns, but never more than $15. We worked together. He mowed around trees and did the trimming; I tackled the big, wide-open spaces. It was hard work. By mid July, I had my Nintendo.
Why charge less than competitors?
Volume, I guess. At the apex of our business, we managed something like 35 lawns a week.
Here's the e-book connection: volume = more readers. More readers means more potential fans. More potential fans means more potential "built-in" sales for your next book.
I've just released Borrowed Saints at $2.99. It's a YA novel, right around 50,000 words, and I spent plenty of time polishing it. Sales have been weak. Very weak. Sure, I need to so some more promotion, etc. Whatever one wants to argue about value and how much a consumer should pay--I believe e-book readers have come to expect $0.99 books from Indies. I didn't start it, and I sure didn't make it happen by myself.
Let's look at the math:
One e-book at $2.99 nets the author around $2 at 70% royalty rate. An author would need to sell six times as many books at $0.99 cents (35% royalty) to make (roughly) the same amount of money.
The math seems to argue for the higher rate, right?
But I think something else is going on, something more important. Even if you only make four sales at $0.99 to each one at $2.99, you've quadrupled your readers (or potential fans). Yes, less money now, but more potential money in the future. Like an investment, right?
When VT managed The House Eaters I sold one e-book at $4.99 in two months. Since they folded, I've sold more than 30 in a month. And yes, I'm only selling it for $0.99.
Volume can work wonders, even at very low prices.
Victorine E. Lieske has sold more than 100,000 copies of Not What She Seems at $0.99. That's a success story I'd take all the way to the bank. Granted, I don't write in the same genre and Victorine has spent a good amount of time marketing her book. But wow.
So what will I do with Borrowed Saints? What do you think I should do?
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By: Aaron Polson,
on 5/10/2011
Blog: The Other Aaron (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: e-books, Kindle, KV Taylor, borrowed saints, The House Eaters, Victorine E. Lieske, Add a tag
By: Cate Gardner,
on 6/28/2010
Blog: The Poisoned Apple (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: KV Taylor, Blackpool Tower, Red Penny Papers, Add a tag
Releasing a major-squee. My short story, Postcard Wings above Blackpool Sands, is to appear in issue one of KV Taylor's The Red Penny Papers - I should book a train seat and celebrate atop the legendary Blackpool Tower.
Beware, champagne corks (or more likely candy floss sticks) expected to tumble down mid party.
*Side Note: When the tower opened in 1893 it cost sixpence - I wonder if they were red?
By: Aaron Polson,
on 6/15/2010
Blog: The Other Aaron (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos, The Red Penny Papers, acceptance, Novella, KV Taylor, Add a tag
If you don't know about KV Talyor's The Red Penny Papers yet, it's time you gave it a gander. Not only is the artwork to die for, The Red Penny Papers is where you will find my serialized novella, Black Medicine Thunder and the Sons of Chaos, this fall.
Sensational, you ask?
Well, yes. Therein you will find:
- undead buffalo
- deals with the devil
- all manner of facial scars
- necklaces made of human teeth
- and a mean ol' bastard named Reaver
...not to mention a cameo (or two) by characters from Loathsome, Dark, and Deep.
Excited? I am.
By: Catherine J Gardner,
on 7/18/2009
Blog: The Poisoned Apple (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Morrigan Books, KV Taylor, Somebody Else Saturday, Add a tag
After a week of 'look at me, look at me', it's time to concentrate on someone else for the weekend. Drum roll please. The victim this week is KV Taylor, you can call her Katey.
I already knew Katey was super cool, not only does she know a heck of a lot about dead composers and dead artists (for which we could point at her and call her a zombie lover, because although they're dead, their souls continue - did someone just vomit at the back), but our Katey also follows the hippest new bands and is a comic book geek.
Cool, hippest - just set me up a room in the geriatric ward.
Anyhow, when she posted a previously published story, Lime Green Closet, on her blog a few days ago, I figured it would be an enjoyable lunch time read. What I didn't expect was to carry it to bed with me. Now I don't mean I lay there looking at the closet worrying about monsters (or white paper in the dark). For one thing I'm a Brit, we don't have closets in our bedrooms. Well most of us don't (we ignore the rich). The one we do have (we call our closet a cloakroom) lives at the bottom of the stairs and was giving me no cause for worry at all.
A pause for you to digest my rambling. Hope the glass from the computer screen didn't scratch your throat.
While fighting insomnia, I began to replay the story as a Twilight Zone episode and thought it would make a good creepy movie. I mean expand on it, and write the screenplay already. Oh right, she's working on a book (The Resurrectionists - of which you can read snippets every Wednesday on her blog), but I'm sure she has time to ring around Hollywood or some cool Japanese studio and get this story made into a movie for me. And to end the abuse of Katey, she's also a Morrigan Books twice published author. You can find her short stories in the anthologies, Voices and Grants Pass. I'd say go check her out, but most of you know her already.
By: Catherine J Gardner,
on 9/3/2008
Blog: The Poisoned Apple (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Editors, Monsters, Anthologies, The Age of Blood and Snow, Voices, KV Taylor, Gary McMahon, Hotel Rooms, Add a tag
Remember that anthology titled 'The Age of Blood & Snow' with the gorgeous cover designed by Nikki Phillips? There is a Press Release regarding its demise over at the Morrigan Books website. The anthology is to be repackaged with a different title and cover so at the moment it is still all systems go and my story, When the Cloak Falls, should be appearing in the new anthology.
I've known for about a week but had to wait for the official announcement before I blabbed. Jeez, it's been hard holding onto my water. :)
In other Morrigan news. The below books are available for pre-order:
VOICES
In every room, there is a story. In this hotel, the stories run to the wicked and macabre. Well-crafted psychological and supernatural horror offerings await you, each written by a master storyteller. Whether you are looking to be shocked, disturbed or out-right frightened, Voices will have something to titillate your nerves and make your hair stand up on end. Leave the lights on and brew a strong cup of tea, the voices in the room plan on keeping you up all night.
It includes stories by KV Taylor, Gary McMahon, Paul Kane and many others.
HOW TO MAKE MONSTERS by Gary McMahon
Since the dawn of mankind, we have always made our own monsters: the terrors of capitalism and corruption, the things between the cracks, the ghosts of self…terrible beasts of desire, debt, regret, racism…of family ties, and the things that get in the way of our aspirations…the familiar monsters of our own faces, of tradition, rejection, and the darkness that lives deep inside our own hearts…
Can you identify the component parts of your own monster?
Can you afford to pay the dreadful price of its construction?
I'd set it at $2.99 for at least 2-3 weeks...maybe even a month. That way, when you drop it to $0.99, you can market it as a "sale".
While I'm not selling quite as many as you, I have noticed the huge difference in sales for The Masks of Our Fathers when I dropped the price to $0.99.
Also, by having books out at $0.99, I think it makes it totally acceptable to charge $2.99 for a new release.
I'm just impatient, Barry.
Personally, I abhor "the race to the bottom" on pricing for anything. In this case it devalues one's intellectual property and the effort one put into the resulting endeavor, in my opinion. Having said that, I can see the value of 99¢ pricing for a loss leader in a series, but right now I don't have a series out there (but will later this year).
Best of luck on sales!
Yeah, Aaron, I think you are being impatient (and this is coming from a guy who's very impatient). I mean, jeez, you only released the book last week! Give it some time. I will say, though, that a 99 cent price point will help it get spread throughout Amazon's system better. When I released The Calling last month, I did so at the introductory price of 99 cents and sold about 150 copies. Now at $2.99, I've sold maybe 40 copies, which is earning me more money. The Dishonored Dead, though, which I started at $2.99, has only sold about 20 copies so far, and it's a zombie novel for pete's sake! But at the same time, we haven't even hit the middle of the month yet, so I'm not too worried. And then, of course, a new month starts and we can do it all over again. Remember: it's a marathon, not a race.