When I put my out-of-print book Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice on Kindle, I had to decide how much to charge. Amazon limited me to charging $9.99 if I wanted the higher royalty, 70%. So I thought, I’ll underprice it a bit to make it more attractive, and listed it for $8.99.
Turns out that was way overpriced. Fierce pricing debates rage among indie authors on blogs and the Kindle online forums. Many charge 99¢—the lowest Amazon allows. One theory is that people will take a chance on anything for 99¢, so you start there to build buzz and then raise your price—all the way to $2.99. Another is simple: the less you charge, the more you sell.
But I think this debate isn’t just about how to sell more copies. It’s about what a piece of writing is worth. One writer posted an e-publisher’s price list (scroll down to find it) for different length works—ranging from a “Short Story” of 12,000 to 18,000 words ($2.50) to a “Plus Novel” over 100,000 words ($6.50).
I was distressed to see prices for books and stories quoted by volume, as though they were pounds of potatoes or bars of soap. I pointed out that a lot goes into writing that can’t be quantified that way. Research. Revision. Thinking. As magazine writers like to say, it’s harder to write short than long because of the additional effort (and skill!) needed to compress information into a tighter space. One person responded that she just wouldn’t fork over more than $1 for something that took less than an hour to read.
These indie authors are almost uniformly writers of genre fiction: horror, romance, sci fi, etc. My book is nonfiction, dealing with a serious question in many women’s lives, and based on a lot of research. Does that make a difference? Should I expect my readership to pay more than an audience looking for entertainment, a quick escapist read? Would they think that’s fair?
And a broader question: is my book—anyone’s book—really the equivalent of those doodads they sell at the 99¢ store—a worthless impulse purchase, but so cheap it doesn’t matter?
Rita, how great to hear from you.
There are some voices on the KindleBoards firmly opposed to 99c. But they’re talking about $2.99 instead. To sell a genre novel–especially if you don’t already have fans–it doesn’t seem you can go higher than that. You’re right, it’s a sad state of affairs. You could look at Smashwords and see what the prices are there, but I’ll bet there’s not much difference.
Thought of selling my unpublished genre novels to Kindle. But 99-cents? Putting a value on our words as if they were a pound of potatoes is quite an apt way of putting it. I fear that in this digital age, we may be forced to rethink the concept of the value of writing, “monetizing” content (I have three books whose right have reverted to me, one of which I plan to update), and getting our works out there. No easy answers.
Because of the “triumph of the market” a lot of areas that shouldn’t be completely market-driven have become so. This would include education and medicine as well as writing and music. Right now, the last two are in free fall, because computer users think they should get “data” for free. But how is the goose that lays that golden egg supposed to live?
You’re right–everything gets sucked into the marketplace and there’s no model left for areas of life that don’t necessarily fit it. The “information should be free” prophets advise introverted writers to change their business model and get paid by developing a following who will pay to come see them do public appearances. Yeah, right–my career goal.