Posted on 2012-Aug-21
In the continuing interview with Mark Coker, Smashwords founder, Forbes observes how several bestselling titles on Amazon have disappeared from the chart. “Cheap eBooks” are one of the key factors that Amazon tried to those books from their list. According to the interview, it is apparent that lowering the price helps sales remarkably, or at least gets promotion done very effectively.
Are Free eBooks Worthwhile?
Citing the iBookstore record, free books are downloaded 100 times more than purchased books. For new authors, this might be the quickest to promote their newly published books. However, the survey reveals how customers are willing to pay more to buy their favorite book. For example, $2.99 is the minimum base price they can spend.
Based on the study by Mark Coker and the interviewer, the standardized word count in the bestselling books has gone up to 120,000 words, which was considered too long for traditional book printing. What can we learn from this finding? Underestimating your book’s potential value might result in weaker sales, and you should strive to produce a quality product. For further analysis of eBook sales, please consult the newest eBook bestselling lists from Digital Book World.
Feedback from Adrian White
For new authors, free downloads might be the absolute alternative for a limited time offer to feed your reader’s appetite and make sure they will come back for more. However, if you have established your reputation through a series of published works with major bookstores and spent every drop of sweat crafting your work like Adrian White, perhaps lowering price somehow reflects decreasing value of your written endeavor. The author takes the risk, based on the reader’s feedback, and prices his book a little higher than the averagely trending $0.99. Why did he do that? Simple enough, his readers told him that they were hooked on the story.
Adrian White also critically disagrees with the current eBook pricing. How could the reader learn and respond when the cheaper titles are available? Of course, your crafted works of art will be washed away by the new wave of “attention-seeking” experiments. To highlight his heated debate against underpriced eBooks, he compares his latest project, priced at $9.99, to one pint of Guinness; its taste is so sweet and full of body that it makes a long-lasting impression. Although there are fancier alternatives, the full quality will explicitly reveal itself in all the fine ingredients and the sweat and tear of the maker. Regardless of how much he is distracted by nicely crowd-pleasing promotion like “Buy One Get One” or “3 for 2,” the quality of his work must retain its core value at its highest capacity.
Label: Self-Publishing
comments powered by Disqus