Just a thread on epub price setting.

[Benjamin Clayborne]

People should experiment with price - and I did and saw EXACTLY this happen. I had been selling my books for $4.95 or $6.95 and I started drinking the Joe Konrath koolaid that $2.99 was the "right price" so I tried lowering my price...I actually not only made less money but sold less books!! I experimented with both $2.99 and $.99 and sold less books at those prices than at $4.95. After three weeks of experimenting - I returned to $4.95 and guess what - my volume increased!! I estimate that I lost about $10,000 during the experiment - but it was worth trying.

Any thought about pricing for short stories? I've got two on Amazon now, for $0.99 each. At ~5k and ~9k words respectively, I can't really imagine charging more than that, and of course Amazon won't let me charge less. My eventual plan for those, when I've got enough, is to collect them into an omnibus and sell it for a higher price.

[zizban]

The ebook market is still in flux. No one has any idea what the ideal price will be when the dust settles. One thing to remember is that printing and distribution are only 10% of the cost of a book so people who say "The price shouldn't be X because they dont have to print and ship the book" don't have a clue what they're talking about.

If you don't like the price of an ebook, complain to the publisher.

[JCFarnham]

Hmm, I swear I saw something priced at like 77p... well I never. Thanks for the information. As I said, I've no true experience in self-publishing or anything like that. I know a lot of theory, but when has that ever worked for the vast majority of us ahah. Your knowledge is valuable.

Michael: When you say you used an "imprint name", do you mean you stuck something that looked like a publishing house name on the product even though it was you doing it by yourself? That's an interesting thought! Anything to get that professional look I suppose

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Hmm, I swear I saw something priced at like 77p... well I never.

77p = 77 pence ~= 99 cents. You can have prices with numbers below "0.99", just not in US dollars. ;-)

[JCFarnham]

Ah now that make infinitely more sense! I really should have considered the exchange rate before opening my mouth

[MichaelSullivan]

Any thought about pricing for short stories? I've got two on Amazon now, for $0.99 each. At ~5k and ~9k words respectively, I can't really imagine charging more than that, and of course Amazon won't let me charge less. My eventual plan for those, when I've got enough, is to collect them into an omnibus and sell it for a higher price.

I know that Barry Eisler was selling his - and selling well at $2.99 but to me that sounds a bit "price gouchy" - I think that $0.99 for a short story makes perfect sense. What I would like to see authors do more of is to not price their "novels" at $0.99 but instead write some shorts at $0.99 then price their novels at $2.99 if they are very insecure, $3.99 if they feel they have a "good" book, and $4.99 if they are very confident in the quality.

Just my 2 cents.

[MichaelSullivan]

Hmm, I swear I saw something priced at like 77p... well I never. Thanks for the information. As I said, I've no true experience in self-publishing or anything like that. I know a lot of theory, but when has that ever worked for the vast majority of us ahah. Your knowledge is valuable.

Michael: When you say you used an "imprint name", do you mean you stuck something that looked like a publishing house name on the product even though it was you doing it by yourself? That's an interesting thought! Anything to get that professional look I suppose

I'm not sure about UK pricing (pence and pounds) it could be that 77p is allowed I thought the discussion was in US dollars and $0.99 is the cheapest.

Yep...You don't have to incorporate (although I have beause I earn a lot of money through writing). You could go through the trouble of registering with your local government - but that's not necessary either. You still file taxes on a schedule C but make up a name, and use it as the publisher. Don't use your own name ... i.e. Michael Sullivan Books. When I started I was the only author in "Ridan Publishing" which is the company that was actually started by my wife....she now has 17 authors and about 30 books for sale so it "became" a real small press but initially the imprint was just to mask the fact that the books were self-published.

I read comments often that say... "People don't care if a book is self published...and nobody looks at the imprint." I think that is not true. Most people can spot a self published book from a mile away - because of two things...price $0.99 - $2.99, and bad covers. When I put out my books I did it at $4.95, under a Ridan Imprint, and with good covers:



So I positioned myself as an "author" not a "self-published" author. If someone asked I of course was honest that the company was owned by my wife but it rarely came up. It was only after I was picked up by the big-six that I exposed I was actually self-published as it was a good "story" to make me stand out from the other big-six authors.

[JCFarnham]

Positioning! That's what I was trying to talk about. Good cover, well researched price, a professional "air"... Good advice.

I'll have to look into the legality of the idea of a stand-in publisher name for a self-published author, before I try it. But in theory you can legally call yourself what you want I suppose. Small, person to person, at home businesses do it all the time with out at first registering.

Did you run into any issues at all Michael? I'm just trying to gather experiencial advice here from people in the business.

I think I'm going to strongly consider high prices after hearing your story, but still experiment. Liike, Two 10k shorts, once price cheap and one priced to look like a "professional choice", and see what happens.

We'll see, I think is the phrase here :P

[Telcontar]

That is an interesting thought - we could all be our own publishing 'houses' if we like. I'm certainly no lawyer, but i can't think of anything off the top of my head that would make it 'illegal.' Only real problem I see with it is that, if someone looks up the publisher they won't find squat except for what you have put out there. Then again, I don't know anyone who would actually look up the publisher.

Yes, very interesting indeed...

[Codey Amprim]

That is an interesting thought - we could all be our own publishing 'houses' if we like. I'm certainly no lawyer, but i can't think of anything off the top of my head that would make it 'illegal.' Only real problem I see with it is that, if someone looks up the publisher they won't find squat except for what you have put out there. Then again, I don't know anyone who would actually look up the publisher.

Yes, very interesting indeed...

I had been thinking of a mythic scribes "publishing house" for quite awhile... While it wouldn't be necessarily a publishing house, it would serve as a type of brand of books almost; sort of like a sticker or something that would be on the cover.

An example could be:

Book title
By
Author's Name
a Mythic Scribe member/writer/author

I think that could and would bring a LOT of attention to MS.

I want to elaborate on this...


On a side note, thank you all for the valuable information in this thread - I've been lurking it for quite awhile. If MS has some type of important threads archive, this ought to be in it.