E-book prices

[Pomtroll]

I bargain shop a lot. Just like when I used the B&M stores. But if I really want a book I'll pay the higher price....Just like I did at the B&M stores. I like freebies & used to get paperbacks for free at our library exchange. Now I hunt them down & it is a bit harder since I generally check more than one site for them.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by crossi

If there is one book and one book only that you want and no other will do then I can see price (within reasonable limits) as not being a factor when you buy. If you have, like I do, over 500 books on your wishlist all of which you want to buy it makes sense to buy by price group hoping by the time you've read all the lower priced books some of the higher priced ones will be lower. I read a book a day. I'm not going to be spending $15/day to fill my reading needs. That would be about half my rent expences. Can't afford that.

Absolutely. It's not about what you want to read, it's about how many books you can afford to not read.

My total expenditure on books is probably up, but it's spread much more widely.

[EcanusPublishing]

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your replies and constructive criticisms. All made interesting reading and showed that opinion around e-books is as diverse as the choice of e-books available. I have certainly gained some valuable insight into what people feel is important and where improvements can be made within our company.

DRM certainly seems to be an issue for some and it is something we have been discussing.
Covers of e-books are very important and I will be taking the comments made forward.
As for prices, a sense of fair play and fair price is all important.
Thank you for your contribution.

Darren
Ecanus Publishing

[david_e]

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[Quiss]

Originally Posted by EcanusPublishing

Would you view an e-book with a low book price as being of low quality?

I'm afraid that I do, even though there are many reasons why someone would give away their work or charge very little for it.

But, in my mind, offering your book (and we all know how much work goes into that) for a buck ninety-nine is telling the world that's what you think your work is worth. I don't even look into those titles.

(Pet peeve alert: I also REALLY REALLY don't like seeing long lists of covers where the titles have all sorts of sub-titles and references to series. I have no interest in book three of possibly five. Give me a good story and finish it!)

My main incentive to buy a book is a the preview showing good writing skills. If I can sink into the story, without being aware of the writer, it's easy for me to get hooked to the point that I'll pay whatever, as long as it's less than the paperback.

$4 to $7 works for me.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Quiss

But, in my mind, offering your book (and we all know how much work goes into that) for a buck ninety-nine is telling the world that's what you think your work is worth.

That is *one* theory.

Another theory is that the author would rather have, say, ten thousand readers paying him $2.99 than five thousand paying him $5.99. And that having the story read matters at least as much as making a buck, to that particular author.

There's this economic principle called price elasticity that says that sales increase with declining price and that increasing prices reduces unit sales.

When it comes to books there are some who think this principle doesn't apply and that raising prices will not significantly affect unit sales.

Smashwords' Mark Coker had quite a bit to say about this just last month:
http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/07/h...ould-harm.html

One surprise, however, was that we found $2.99 books, on average, netted the authors more earnings (profit per unit, multiplied by units sold) than books priced at $6.99 and above. When we look at the $2.99 price point compared to $9.99, $2.99 earns the author slightly more, yet gains the author about four times as many readers. $2.99 ebooks earned the authors six times as many readers than books priced over $10.

If an author can earn the same or greater income selling lower cost books, yet reach significantly more readers, then, drum roll please, it means the authors who are selling higher priced books through traditional publishers are at an extreme disadvantage to indie authors in terms of long term platform building. The lower-priced books are building author brand faster. Never mind that an indie author earns more per $2.99 unit sold ($1.80-$2.10) than a traditionally published author earns at $9.99 ($1.25-$1.75).

There was a whole thread discussing the concept round these parts.
Some of us found it an interesting topic for debate.

[bgalbrecht]

When I was buying paper books, I never bought hardcovers, no matter how much I liked the author (with the exception of a few omnibus editions), and I often bought used copies at a 50% discount to the list price. I always had a TBR pile that was more than I could read in a month. Now that I have an ereader, I have a virtual TBR pile that is more than I can read in the rest of my life, although that includes the freebies that I expect that I will never read. I don't like any author so much that I am willing to pay more than mass market paperback prices for their work so they can jump to the front of my TBR pile.

[ottdmk]

Price matters to me. While I love reading on my Kobo, and I really like the reduced physical space, I would find it annoying to pay more for an ebook then a physical book. While I realize that a lot of the costs of producing a book have nothing to do with the actual printing and management of the physical object, all of that stuff is still *part* of the cost.

Thankfully, things may be improving on that front. I've noticed some Random House ebooks (Agency model) being priced 20% lower then the Mass Market Paperbound edition. That's acceptable to me. It's still a little annoying, as a decent sale can beat that price (Chapters here in Canada usually puts on a "Buy 3 get the 4th free" sale a few times a year, which = 25% off.)

It would be nice if Penguin would follow Random House's example. No way am I paying $1 more for a Dresden Files novel in e-pub then paper...

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by EcanusPublishing

Historically the price of an e-book has been far lower than the equivalent printed version. Some would say rightly so, but the quality and competition has increased dramatically, the expectations of readers who are purchasing e-books are increasing.

While many readers would be happy to pay more for higher-quality ebooks, the fact is we can't--there is no way to know "this book has a plausible and interesting story, which was edited, proofred, and well-formatted as an ebook" before purchase.

Small/indie publishers don't talk about their editing skills. Mainstream publishers, who are better at it (or maybe they just refuse submissions that need extensive editing, except for late in a popular series), don't talk about their proofing and formatting. Buyers have no way of knowing the quality of a book before purchase--so there's no reason to spend more.

Does the price have the greatest impact on why you decide to buy an e-book or is it the overall specifics of a book ie the cover, the blurb, the reviews? Would you view an e-book with a low book price as being of low quality?

I have a strict $6 cap for fiction ebooks. (When inflation pushes Baen's prices up, I'll reconsider that.) Within that range ($0-6), I have discovered quality is entirely random; other than knowing an author or, sometimes, having developed trust in a publisher, I can't tell whether the story will be "good enough."

I haven't decided on a specific cap for short stories, but one of my reasons for avoiding DRM is that I can't tell if a $5 book is 80,000 words or 8,000. Sites that use DRM don't list word counts; they list filesize, as if that were an indicator of how much "book" is involved.

I try to ignore the cover, other than noting that if it's got a cover designed for print that doesn't reduce well, I'm probably not the target audience for the book. (I don't read novels in print anymore.) Since, unlike a paper book, I probably won't ever see the cover after I start reading, I don't care what it looks like; it's just an indication of how much resources the publisher is putting towards marketing. That said, a *good* cover can get me to click on the book's info page, and I'm much more likely to buy it.

Typos or grammar mistakes in the blurb = Do Not Buy. If the publisher can't be bothered to make a one-paragraph advertisement read smoothly, I don't trust their editorial process. If they can't write an intriguing blurb--which, admittedly, has nothing to do with story quality--I can't tell whether the book would appeal to me. I'll buy books by authors I know and like without reading the blurb; when I'm browsing, the blurb is competing with thousands of other possible purchases--including some by authors I know and like.

Having been burned by a couple of bad choices, I'm unwilling to waste money and reading time on books that haven't fully caught my interest. My "give it a try, maybe I'll like it" approach is limited to freebies--and not too many of those. I have plenty to read; authors and publishers who want money from me will need to find a way to convince me I will enjoy reading their works more than my existing TBR list.

Darren
Ecanus Publishing[/QUOTE]

[Scott Nicholson]

I have a pretty simple rule for this. I don't care one bit what a publisher or author think it's worth.

I only care what I think it's worth.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Scott Nicholson

I have a pretty simple rule for this. I don't care one bit what a publisher or author think it's worth.

I only care what I think it's worth.

And how do you know this before you buy it at the price set by the author or publisher?

[DrNefario]

If I ever needed a book as urgently as I sometimes need a hot drink, then maybe I'd be willing to pay more.

When I'm buying a book, it's for some vague time in the increasingly-distant future, so I can easily afford not to buy it.

[spindlegirl]

I actually don't like drinking my coffee piping hot. I buy it (and I wouldn't buy plain coffee for $4 - that is just crazy talk, I like mine plain with a little cream), and make myself at home at a table.

After I've enjoyed just the peace and quiet of my table for a good ten minutes or so, either reading or talking with my husband if he is with me, then it has cooled down enough for me to start sipping. A lovely thing to enjoy in mid-winter in Nova Scotia, gets me out of the house, and I get the experience of using their free wifi and the "rental" of the table space. So for the $2 or so I pay for my coffee, it's not a bad deal.

I pay $2-$4 for some e-books that are DRM-free, so for $6, I get a coffee with an e-book on the side, tasty tasty. And I get to keep them and read them on the 'screen' of my choice.

$13? Now that book better come with a side of chocolate cheesecake, and Don Ross serenading me on his custom Luthier guitar.

[Clytie]

I'll pay up to $4.99 for an interesting ebook, and up to $7.99 for a "must-have". I buy most of my titles at $0-$3.99. Free offers often result in me buying a whole series or the rest of that author's titles. I've discovered a lot of new authors through free offers.

Price-fixing (especially $20-ebook price-fixing aimed specifically at Australians) has resulted in me no longer buying Agency titles.

In any case, an ebook shoud cost at most half the pbook price. The ebook is not transferable or resellable, and it doesn't incur costs for printing, warehousing, transport, retail display, counter-staff wages or returns.

Like other commenters here, I prefer ebooks without DRM, having been stuck with hundreds of unreadable Secure Mobipocket titles after migrating from Palm to iPhone (Amazon still refuses to license the Mobipocket format to any third party). With different retailers having their own flavour of Adobe DRM, and Amazon having their own DRM entirely, no format is "secure" for the purchaser.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by EcanusPublishing

Hello
Would you view an e-book with a low book price as being of low quality?

No. I'm currently reading an indie series now with each book being $1.99 and it's pretty much one of the best things I've ever read. I pretty much only read indies at this point and my favorite authors are $5 and under.