A week ago, Diana and I decided to try an experiment: All the e-books in the Renegade Writer Store (except one) would become Pay What You Want, meaning you, the reader, decide what to pay for each one.
The minimum price was $1 because that’s the minimum my order processor allows. (And they do charge me for each download!)
The deal was this: We would try this experiment for one week, and if we liked how it turned out, we would keep this pricing structure.
Here are the results:
- Around 330 writers took advantage of the Pay What You Want offer.
- The average order was $6.50.
- Sometimes an order was for a single book, but mostly they were for multiple products.
- Many, many people scooped up every book we have at $1 apiece. (Now you need to READ them all, LOL!)
- The lowest order amount was $1. The highest order amount was $30 (for multiple books). (That was pretty exciting!)
- Most writers paid below retail for the books…but some paid around retail, and just a few paid higher! (And this is not a judgement in any way…readers paid what they could afford or according to how much value they thought the books would bring.)
- We got orders from all over the world, including Canada, the U.S., Serbia, and Nigeria! (Discovered one reader from Serbia went to the same high school as our Serbian exchange student!)
- Several writers emailed me to say they hope to make sales based on what they learned in our books, so they can come back and pay more for them. Aw! (I’m actually thinking about creating a way for writers to come back and add more to their payments if they feel they’ve gotten a ton of value from the books. )
So what’s the verdict?
Of course we, the authors, feel we deserve to be compensated well for the value we provide in our books. We worked hard on them, and they cost us beaucoup cash for design, editing and so on. I also pay the order processor, and need to pay for tech help—for example, I paid $500 to have the books pages set up, and another $500 to get them converted to PWYW.
And of course, these books are meant to get writers gigs and change their lives! We think that’s worth at LEAST the $5-10 most of the books were originally priced at.
On the other hand, once we eat the sunk costs, it costs us very little to provide these e-books.
AND…since our mission is to help as many writers as possible reach their freelancing dreams, having 330 people get their hands on our books is excellent news! We want to reach EVERYONE—including those who can’t yet afford to hire help, take classes, or buy full-priced books.
So…drumroll…we decided to keep the PWYW pricing structure!
That means from now on, YOU choose what to pay for each book, e-course book, and checklist…including Write Your Way Out of the Rat Race…And Step Into a Career You Love, which comes with a boatload of downloads (originally $9.99), The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success (also $9.99), and the Write for Magazines E-Course book (originally $29).
(And soon, very soon, I’ll be posting a meditation I created called Positive Thinking for Writers as a PWYW product. I wrote the meditation and it was produced and voiced by a former public radio reporter! It has everything…soothing music, nature sounds…IT’S AWESOME.)
Yep, you can get all these goodies for as little as a buck each.
Don’t have much cash? Pay the minimum. You’re rich? Pay more than retail and reap the karma that comes from covering a less advantaged writer.
Here’s where you can do that:
http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/
Please do spread the word to all your writing friends! You can post it on forums, share it on Facebook and Twitter, and let your writing groups know they can now get these helpful, valuable books for a minimum of $1 each. (BTW, we reserve the right to change our minds in the future…but for now we don’t foresee getting rid of PWYW.)
Here’s a tweet you can use if you like:
Renegade Writer e-books are now Pay What You Want…permanently! That means YOU choose what to pay! http://www.therenegadewriter.com/store/
Thank you, thank you for helping us make this experiment a success! We’re so excited to get our books into as many hands as possible!
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These Humble Bundles are certainly the way to go. They offer an affordable access point for new readers of a continuing series. I would welcome a chance to add our indie title Brittle Hill to an upcoming Indie Bundle, hint hint…
These bundles may well be the future of comics. I’ve bought them all so far.
I think the biggest hurdle to Marvel & DC offering comics via Humble Bundle is that they bundle buyers would expect them to be DRM free.