Some Thoughts About eBook Pricing - and Guilty Lending.





The other night, in one of my frequent sleepless spells (my mind doesn't seem to take any notice of my body's manifest need for sleep, these days) I found myself thinking about the price of eBooks. Most writers who are publishing their backlists or their own new 'inventory' tend to go for the cheaper option, keeping the price around the £2.00 mark or less. Much less, in the case of small collections of stories, for example, which generally sell at 80 - 90p. 
I've heard various pronouncements from conventional publishers on this score, most of them attempting to justify their prices for downloads which are generally much closer to the prices charged for 'paper' books. 
But no matter how good the cause, there is an optimum price beyond which people - especially young people, who are in the habit of downloading music and games - are reluctant to go. In fact there is some evidence from the overall download industry, that reasonably low priced downloads tend to curb piracy. Illegal downloads are and will increasingly become a problem, but all the same, current evidence suggests that the majority of people are law-abiding - at a price! It may not say much for public morality, but it's a fact that if people can download cheaply and legally, that's what most of them will do. 
I've heard publishers and even writers justifying their higher download prices by talking about 'payment for content' and it's a reasonable point to make. 
The amount of work that goes into a novel is huge. Nobody is more aware of that than a novelist! But then the amount of work that goes into - for example - even a small downloadable I-Phone game is also huge, and generally involves three or four or more people going flat out for months. The single geek, working alone in his bedroom, much loved by news programmes, is rare these days. Game development is a professional pursuit and commercially licensed software costs a fortune. So does the necessary hardware. And yet these downloads are generally sold for pennies rather than pounds, with their makers depending on volume of sales to bring in the cash. 
Besides, the pronouncements of publishers declaring that they (and we) must 'pay for content' would be somewhat more credible if conventional advances were not already so low and royalties so tiny that most authors almost never manage to 'earn back' even very low advances, so that they are left in a constant state of guilt - an unhealthy state of affairs and one which isn't conducive to good working relationships.
However, the thing that gave me my small moment of clarity, at three o'clock the other morning, was the fact that I was finishing an extraordinarily good book called Five Quarters of the Orange, by Joanne Harris and - dear reader - I must guiltily admit that I had bought it from the second hand bookshelf in our community shop. You can salve my conscience by going away and buying a copy right now. Not only that, but as I finished it, with a sigh of satisfaction (it really is a very good book!) I found myself thinking of my various relatives and friends who might also like to read it, mentally making a little list, who to give it to first, and then she could pass it on to that friend and so on and so on...A chain of people, reading the novel, and not a sou going back to Joanne or her publisher, who put in all that work in the first place. (I do buy new books, often, honest - but I still felt guilty!) 
But it also struck me that - now that I have a Kindle - if I had come across this novel at, say, £1.90, as a download, I would have clicked and bought it without a second thought. But if I had seen it in a bookshop, I maybe wouldn't. If I had money I might, but I can't even afford to heat my house, so books are a luxury. Reading, however, is as essential as breathing, so I can justify low priced download treats.And it also struck me that most of the friends to whom I had considered lending the book would almost certainly have done exactly the same. And then I started to add up the small amounts of money which would be generated for writers and publishers by each of those downloads, and it very quickly came to more, quite a lot more, than the price that somebody paid for the original book, the same paperback copy which lots of people will have read, by the time it has been passed around. 
I can't believe that publishers live in such commercial seclusion that they are unaware of just how much casual borrowing of paperbacks goes on, here in the real world. Wouldn't it be better if we paid just a little for a download instead?
Of course, charity shops will suffer in the future, if this takes off in a big way. But then there's all the difference in the world between the small charity or village shop with its shelf or two of paperbacks, and the big charity business, competing with struggling bookshops, and selling thousands of freely acquired, almost new books at commercial prices, with no benefit to writer or publisher at all. The former will have no trouble finding donated books. The latter may begin to struggle a bit. I know they do sterling work, but still - I find it quite hard to have much sympathy. 



3 comments:

Chris Longmuir said...

Well argued post, Catherine. Pricing ebooks is a minefield with some favouring the less thn a pound price, and some going for the price that will give the higher royalty return.

D.S. said...

Hi Catherine,

I found your site from a comment/link you left on deanwesleysmith.com - essential reading for any writer these days, I think!

First, let me say that I like the graphic at the top of your post that centers around "coffee!" Ah, so much these days centers around coffee, especially in a writer's world!

I found that your thoughts on e-book pricing were accurate; at least to my mind. If the price is low, then it stands to reason that a click to buy the e-book will be a lot easier for readers, especially these days when money is tight for many. That way, we writers can have more people reading our work, readers can get it for less, and we can make our profits on the higher sales volume. I'd say that's a win-win. (For the trees, too!)

I've got 9 e-books of my own for sale online, and pricing has been an on-going question. I'm sure when I find the right price for my e-books with my audience (and when they find me in enough numbers), the rest will take care of itself. But, so far it's been a bit of an experiment to realize what works best. I've tried a few different prices for my e-books so far, and it hasn't made much difference, yet. But, maybe I've not priced them low enough.

I have noticed that the best sellers in terms of e-books do tend to have the lowest prices, often as low as .99 USD, at least for independent authors. But, there are usually many best selling e-books well over $10 USD too, but these tend to be brand name writers from large publishers.

I did some thinking about what you wrote, and dropped the price of my novel (First one so far!), so I'll be keeping an eye on my sales numbers to see if they climb higher as a result. I also write screenplays, and those are likely a "tougher sell," but I have sold some e-books of those, too.

Thanks for the informative post, I'll check back on your site.

Best of luck in your writing!

-Dave
Toronto, Canada

P.S. I didn't see an e-book option for the book you mentioned, "Five Quarters of the Orange," so, don't feel too guilty! ;)

Catherine Czerkawska said...

Thanks, Dave - interesting comments. Yes, I found the deanwesleysmith site fascinating. (And came to it from passiveguy which is essential reading as well!) Best of luck with pricing and experimenting.I suppose one of the big advantages of eBooks is that we can do just that - experiment and change what doesn't seem to be working!