Investigating a Decent Price for eBooks: Guest Post

So last week Monica Valentinelli mentioned my e-book pricing/reading post. Turns out, she's given this topic a good deal of thought, based on this wacky notiong of "experience." So I thought it would be nice for her to swing by and share her genius and experience with us. She's an author and game designer whose work can be found here. 

In addition to her own writing, she's edited HAUNTED, a book you'll want to check out.

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By Monica Valentinelli

There are three types of e-book pricing discussions you'll often encounter on the web. The first is from the reader's perspective and deals with what someone is willing to pay for versus what a particular item is worth. In other words, statements that say eBook prices should *all* be can be translated to I would like to be priced at X amount because that's what I think it should be. Nathan Bransford has taken some reader polls about e-book pricing; you can read the shifting changes here.

The second strain is from hands-on experience, usually from authors and small press publishers who are dealing with small business concerns. Pricing is an experiment, and rightly so, for many of these folks are venturing into eCommerce territory above and beyond crafting a good tale. Three articles that come to mind are from Tobias Buckell, who wrote about selling Tides from the New World, Jim Hines, who blogged about selling Goldfish Dreams, and my own when I talked about The Queen of Crows: a One Year Retrospective. (Although I'm an author and game designer, I've been in eCommerce and online marketing for several years for my day job.)

The third discussion is nebulous at best and can often be described as economic theory infused with concerns about piracy. For the sake of streamlining this discussion, I'm not going to dive into the differences between a textbook and practical experience.

Now that you have some background, I'm going to briefly touch on why current e-book pricing is akin to walking into an M.C. Escher painting.

Unlike the products you buy in a physical store, with eCommerce you can change the price on-the-fly, discuss it, and watch its immediate effect on traffic and sales. You can, as an eCommerce retailer, get up-to-the-minute stats on who visited your website and improve the customer's experience. That's the Amazon, DriveThruFiction.com, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble side of the story. Publishers (Yes, authors who self-publish are included in this) are at the mercy of whatever those retailers do. Some, like Amazon, are more aggressive than others. DriveThruFiction.com (Disclaimer: I'm currently doing some eCommerce consulting for the site) is almost the opposite and offers tools for direct e-mail marketing to customers. Each retailer takes a portion of the sale and has specific requirements for formatting; Smashwords is different from Amazon, for example.

In addition to the fees taken, there are other things that happen outside of the author or publisher's control like market share, on-site promotions, internal ranking algorithms for sales, etc.

All of these things combined affect how an e-book is presented to a potential customer influenced by the age of the release and demand. New books typically sell better than old books. You may have seen authors who publish through traditional houses request that their readers buy a new book from the same store in the same week. This is part of the reason why. Improved sales rankings directly affect a book's visibility in a retail store, whether it's online or not.

Price is only one consideration when offering a product online. There are other factors including: popularity of genre, visibility of name/platform, cover art, description, and presentation. Nascent authors typically (unless you're lightning in a bottle) don't sell as well as established authors because they don't have the existing readership to support their sales. Even then, established authors now-a-days would have to throw some marketing behind their other books to ensure that their readers know they exist in the first place.

I feel getting readers is, more than anything, where introductory pricing discussions come into play. Pricing a book at ninety-nine cents is a way to encourage new readers to buy into a series or an author's work, provided a) there's more work to buy and b) the reader reads the story and c) reviews or talks about it. By its nature, ninety-nine cent pricing demands a high volume of sales to be profitable.

Rounding up to a dollar, let's say you need/want to make a hundred dollars on your twenty-thousand word e-book. (Ignoring cover art, time to write, formatting, etc.) To make a hundred dollars, you have to look at your margin. With most sites, you'll make seventy cents a copy. Wow, sounds like a lot, right? Okay, well you'd need to sell approximately 143 copies to make that profit. Now price your e-book at $2. Your margin is $1.40. So now you need to sell significantly less copies to make the same amount of money. What's the benefit of pricing your e-book at a dollar more? You can always lower the price to be on sale at ninety-nine cents.

Is a hundred dollars a reasonable profit for a novella? Well, if we calculate the value of your book using five cent a pro word rates, then your 20K novella is $1,000. Suddenly, you need to sell significantly more copies of your e-book to hit $1,000. Mind you, that does not include cover art, editing, marketing, formatting, etc. When all is said and done, I suggest running a cost analysis on what you put into a book versus how much you're making. Then take a look at indirect impacts to determine whether or not it was worth it. Having that information can help influence your decisions about pricing, too.

Books still have a high production value in the sense that authors don't wake up and puke out a polished 100,000 word novel in a day (or even a 20,000 word novella). The challenge, of course, is that the reader doesn't see the effort that goes into it. They see the file size (considerably less than a photo or a movie), the cover, or the hook. They buy based on an emotion. What you're selling the reader, in my opinion, is a mini-vacation. If they prefer Neil Gaiman's vacation to the one you're offering, then guess what? They'll not only buy his vacation instead of yours, chances are they'll pay more for it, too.

Right now, traditional publishers may skew pricing in favor of more popular authors primarily because readers will pay more to get their stories. In other words: projected volume comes into play. When you think about the number of copies you can sell versus what you will sell, then the conversation changes. Some authors are totally fine selling less copies but making more money. Others are going for the numbers and the introductory prices hoping that'll boost their other book sales.

In the end, pricing discussions comes down to what you want to get out of your particular book and why you're offering it for sale in the first place. Readers will have a tough time navigating the exponentially greater number of books being sold every year. Authors who foray into self-publishing will experiment as new formats, e-readers, and eCommerce sites become available.

Even then, even with all these discussions, e-books are still very new. On the big publishing side? Check out this article where e-books account for less than twenty-five percent of an individual publisher's sales. It will take at least five to ten years for the market to sort itself out. The trick will be to figure out how you, as a reader or as an author, will find your niche while the eCommerce sites try to figure out theirs.

About Monica Valentinelli


Monica is an author and game designer who lurks in the dark. By day, she's the Marketing Director for Steve Jackson Games and John Kovalic's business manager. By night, she pens short stories, novellas, and hobby games. For more about Monica and her published works, visit http://www.mlwrites.com.

Homeland

Homeland is a TV Drama on Showtime--probably fall/winter's best new show. It follows two main characters.... Claire Danes plays a troubled CIA agent who believes and American soldier has been turned by Al Qaeda and will soon attack the States.

Damian Lewis plays that soldier. The early episodes really play the is he or isn't he a terrorist angle, but then bears down into a dark character study about what it's like to return to the United States after being a POW for 8 years. Lewis' character really brings the twists and turns to the show and seeing what he's going to do week in and week out keep dragging me back in.

The action scenes are brief and tense, and this week's climax had me sitting up, trying to get a closer shot of what was going to happen. The show is rarely predictable, and even when it looked like it was about to take a disappointing turn toward the every day TV drama, the show managed to right itself in the next episode.

The scene-stealer for me, however, is Mandy Patankin, who plays a Dane's curmudgeon mentor. His dry deliver and serious manner are a pleasure to watch.

If you have Showtime, but aren't watching this show, you need to track it down.

Anyone else seen it? Thoughts?

In Praise of the Short Story

Did you know that May is national Short Story month. I didn't. In 2007 Dan Wickett, drafting off of the idea of National Poetry Month, decided that the short story should have one. Neither did I. But I'm confused. The crime fiction community has always been an early adopter and started using online zines as a means to publish fiction damn near 15 years ago. In my opinion the crime short fiction continues to be one of the, if not the most, vibrant of all the other online fiction communities, even as other have been finally catching up with the idea of online publications. So *if* crime fiction has the most vibrant online short fiction scene and *if* there is a short story month then how come our community (and the zines we publish) aren't included in this endeavor? I don't know, but we should be.

So why do I love (and sometimes hate) the short story?

One of the most daring acts of reading is found in reading the short story. As readers (and consumers) we have some built in motions that we go through before making a purchase. Sometimes we aren't even aware of them. A cover caches your eye; the author's bio is read, blurbs can even be read or glanced at. Perhaps most important of all is the synopsis. The reader of long fiction constructs a safety net under their reading experience the moment they read the synopsis because at that moment they have some idea of what they are getting into.

A lot of these subconscious trappings of the reading experience are so ingrained they aren't even noticed. But the short story, and by extension the single author short story collection, strips a lot of these trappings away leaving only the title, author's name and the story itself. In many respects it's the purest form of reading. Even with an author you've read before or at a publication you've read before there are few expectations brought to the reading experience. It's a bit like stepping off the ledge, you simply begin the story and that's it. There are very few guideposts as to what you'll be reading. It may be one of the greatest acts of literary trust out there.

Which, to me, is part of the reason short story collections aren't read as widely as they should be. It's hard to to get a reader to close their eyes and make that leap.

So, should we make a concerted, community wide effort to participate in Short Story Month next year? Why do *you* like the short story? And, what/who are some of your favorite stories and authors?

I've started a new blog that will begin posting new content in 2012 that will promote the short story all year. It's called Short Story 365. Check it out and consider participating.

Also, Spinetingler will now be publishing weekly flash fiction.



Currently reading: REAMDE by Neal Stephenson; Hill Country by R Thomas Brown; Trigger Man by Jim Ray Daniels

Currently Listening: J Roddy Walston & The Business

Life intrusions

by: Joelle Charbonneau

Writing takes discipline. You have to put your butt in the seat and fill the pages with words. If you don’t do it, no one else will. And since more often than not a writer is self-employed, there isn’t a boss looking over your shoulder threatening to make you work late if you don’t get that day’s job done. Writing requires a personality that can sit down, self-motivate and type day after day until the story is done.

When I’m writing, I always set a daily goal. Sometimes I hit the goal. Some days I miss it. But regardless of whether I hit the goal or not, I make sure that each and every day I write.

Unfortunately, sometimes no matter how disciplined the writer or how dedicated one is to the project at hand life intrudes. This week life intruded for me. Monday night, I got a call from my mother telling me that a man who watched me grow from my childhood self into an adult woman died unexpectedly. Not that death is ever expected, but still. This man wasn’t sick. He showed no signs of being anything other than vital and healthy and strong. One minute he was laughing with his family. The next he was gone leaving a whole in our hearts that can never be filled.

So this week, despite the desire to sit down and write I found myself unable to put words on the page. I cried with his family. I looked through pictures. I attended his wake and his funeral and shared the memory and impact of his life with those who loved him.

Some times life intrudes on our desire to be productive. We might not like it, but it is important for us to recognize when we can and cannot write. This week, life kicked me and this man’s friends and family in the ass. We all fell down, got up and did what we had to do to get through. The road in front of his family is long and hard. I know what they feel and will take as much time as needed away from my own work to make sure they have the support they need to survive. And tomorrow I will start writing again because it is what I do—what I have to do—what he was so proud of me for. And while the holidays will take time away from the work we all want to do, I cannot stress enough that we should all give life permission to intrude. Our families, our friends and the memories we make every day are the reasons we all can do what we do.

Let It Snow

by
Scott D. Parker

I don't know about you but sometimes when I hear the term "writer's block," I literally picture a large cube made out of stone, usually granite. The sides are smooth and shiny, machined to perfection. When you get up close, you can almost hear the solidness of it, a mute amount of laughter. And, in your had, is a small chisel.

"Now," says the message, "create something."

There are times in my writing life when the feat is so daunting that I don't even start. I think some folks consider writer's block to be the absence of ideas. What about the plethora of ideas, but that they are so many and varied that you get nothing accomplished?

A problem I deal with is one of starting. I know plenty of folks who start books and get a third of the way in and then lay it aside. The block I sometimes face is the one that prevents me from even starting. I have ideas and I germinate them in my brain. I'm working on a new Calvin Carter story and it's exciting. But I haven't put pen to paper. Why? The fear of starting.

Weird, huh?

We just finished November and the NaNoWriMo challenge. I did not participate but now, I'm wondering if I should have. The biggest benefit of doing NaNoWroMo is the exercise the writing muscle gets. With 50,000 words to create in 30 days, that works out to 1,667 words a day. And therein lies that giant stone cube, aka the oppressive Word Count.

Word count can, in my mind, act as a kind of writer's block. If you were to sit down at your computer each day during November and you *have* to write 1,667 words, it can be daunting. And, frankly, you will probably end up writing crap to to get to the word count. On the other hand, you're exercising the writing muscle.

Still, the word count can be like that great granite cube. It's just sitting there, staring at you. But you have that chisel and you take a whack at it. And, lo and behold, a sliver of granite flies off the cube. It's a first step to breaking down that granite cube.

That's why I tend to like the snowflake method of writing. It's not that website that has you start with a main idea and the expand on it. I'm talking about snowflake in terms of word count. I would like to be able to bust out 1,667 words a day or more, but sometimes, I can only manage 500. But I've written 500 new words and I'm moving forward.

Yes, I know this isn't rocket science and y'all've heard this kind of thing a thousand times, but it's hit home with me in recent days. I get so fixated on writing a thousand words a day or some such random number when what I should actually be focused on isn't the word count but the tale. I've come to realize that if I just work on the story, the word count will take care of itself. I want the blizzard to whoosh down and dump two feet of snow on me (or thousands of word). Maybe, perhaps, I'm the gentle snowfall kind of guy. Five hundred words here, 200 there, a 1,000 somewhere down the line. All these numbers add up, I need to keep reminding myself. The end will come when it's there. Just keep the snow falling. Or that chisel in your hand.

Song of the Week: "River" by Robert Downey, Jr. Now that Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas music is out at our house. I have a set routine: I always listen to Chicago's 2003 What's It Going To Be Santa CD first, from front to back. After that, everything can come out of the box. I love spinning my Brian Setzer CDs and chilling to Chris Botti's holiday CD. But one song I always long to hear is this Joni Mitchell-penned tune as sung by Downey when he was on the TV show "Ally McBeal." That season was the best and it was the first time I truly saw how gifted Downey was as an actor. This tune has a special, melancholic vibe to it that is perfect for the adult that I am in this time of year. While I can grin from ear to ear while listening to Chicago or Setzer, it's "River" that tugs the heartstrings. And not just one in particular. The longing expressed in these lyrics is for Christmases past. I don't pine for them and wish I were young. I'm an eternal optimist and I see each day and each year as the best one I've ever lived. But a loving tenderness for all that I've seen and experienced seeps through me as I listen to this song. Another one that speaks directly to this longing is Faith Hill's "Where Are You Christmas?" Is there a song like that for you?


Tweet of the Week I:

Sometimes, as men, it's nice to just sit around and talk about our hair.

-- Nathan Fillion


Tweet of the Week II:

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

-- C. S. Lewis

Sick Transit Gloria

By Russel D McLean

“I think crime writers are very sick people.”

Thus spake a commenter on this article on Patricia Cornwell. Let’s leave aside whether one likes or dislikes Cornwell’s works* and think about this commenter.

“…very sick people.”

Why?

“Once one has had even a glimpse of a wicked deed as words on a page, it stays put in the imagination- the torment is transmitted by a third party, crime writers spread about their material- it is the canker (sic) of warped minds.”

Which sounds like a bad thing. And maybe it is to a degree. In reality no one wants to confront the worst that humanity has to offer. Yet myself and other crime writers (or worse, horror writers) do so all the time. We distill terrible acts and place them on the page in the name of entertainment.

What the bloody hell is wrong with us?

Well, let’s leave aside the fact that our readers are clearly worse because they want more of the same and right now, please. And let’s think about entertainment.

The Greeks were clearly as sick – maybe more so – as any modern crime writer. Their tragedies were built on buckets of gore. Oedipus Rex is clearly the work of a screwed up mind. Yet it is a classic of literature. Even Shakespeare - - he wrote Titus Andronicus, where incest, cannibalism and a thousand other atrocities are depicted, and of course Hamlet where just about everybody dies**

Drama – at its heart – is conflict. And conflict is not pretty. It never has been. It never will be. I can accept that certain people don’t want to be reminded of ugly truths in this world – and in fact, at times, even I can’t take it and want to escape from such things – but the principle of entertainment is not merely diversion. Fiction and drama are our ways of coping with the world. By dealing with something in a fictional narrative we are excising it, in a sense. By confronting darkness on some level we process our reaction to it in a safe environment.

Fiction without conflict, without some essential darkness, is worthless. Even in the lightest of comedies, there is conflict and loss and struggle, even if it is over seemingly inane stakes. The fact is, however, that crime fiction and other dark forms of writing allow the reader and the writer to make sense of those things in the world that may otherwise be senseless. A person cannot cope with life by running away from that which makes them uncomfortable.
Good fiction – whether we see it as harmless “entertainment” or not – is always about making some sense of life. To be effective in doing this, sometimes that means going to places that we may find unsettling, confronting parts of ourselves and others we might otherwise run away from. There is no sickness or “canker” in admitting that people do bad things. There is more sickness in denying this, perhaps, in pretending that the world is all sweetness and life.

Not that I propose for an instant all fiction should be a bleak and soul-destroying gaze into the absolute depths of human suffering.

Far from it.

As in all things, I believe in balance. Sometimes I’ll want to be reassured and reminded that things can work out for the best, that there is good in people. Sometimes I’ll want to try and work out why people behave in the terrible ways they sometimes do.

Fiction can and should tackle both these extremes and everything in between.

Fiction should – no matter if it does it by subtext, by text, even by accident – make us think. Even if that thought is merely, “This is/isn’t how I want to live my life”

If it doesn’t do that and if it doesn’t strike a balance, then I wonder, what the point would be of it at all.


*For what its worth I think her first four or five books utterly revolutionised the crime fiction scene and were in and of themselves very good examples of the new genre. After that, well, I found the series lost its rhythms. But clearly hundreds of thousands of readers disagree. And mu opinion's just one drop in the ocean.
**There was originally a joke here that was based on the fact my brain was tired and utterly misremembered the plot of Hamlet. Which just goes to show that even your beardy hero slips up every once in a while***
***There was also a third foot note which is the one Ray Banks refers to.

French Twist

I've written a few stories featuring Joe Pepper and Cal Gibson. The first was The Goldfish Heist, which was originally published by the Scotsman but can also be found in an old DSD post. The second story was The Tin Foil Heist, which is collected in Discount Noir, available through Untreed Reads. After a month of us talking craft here at DSD, I was toying with the idea of writing one more craft post. I asked for a few suggestions on twitter but, as is often the case with craft talk, I didn't really feel I was the guy qualified to be taking on some of the suggestions. So I thought I'd go to the other end of the tunnel, and give out some free fiction. So here's another short tale starring the Abbot and Costello of Glasgow crime.

French Twist

“I think I’m gonna move to Paris.”

“Paris?”

“Yeah, you know how you wanna move to New York? Well I want Paris.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last night. I was watching TV? I thought, hey, that looks nice.”

“What were you watching?”

“Emmanuelle.”

“Right. You’ve never even been to Paris. You don’t know anything about France.”

“I like Garlic Bread.”

“Garlic bread? You’re talking about moving to Paris, not to Pizza Hut. What will you do over there?”

“My Da’ knows this guy over there, Claude or Pierre, something French-”

“-Good to see you’re picking up the lingo-”

“-Shut it. Anyway. Da’ knows this guy, he’ll sort me out a job as a cleaner.”

“You’re moving to Paris to be a cleaner?”

“Not like mops and dishes and shite, it’s like a code, a hitman, see? Like what Baz does for Da’ except, you know, in French.”

“I know what a cleaner is, bawbag, I hired Baz, remember? But nobody actually calls them cleaners.”

“Right? What do they call them?”

“Hitmen.”

“Oh, right, yeah. But they probably have a different name for them in France, right?”

“Yes, they’ll call them something French.”

“Do you speak any? French, I mean?”

“No, see, that’s my plan. If I don’t speak the language, then if the Polis lift me, they can’t interrogate me.”

“Right.”

“But I need to learn a little, I guess. Stuff like toilet and sex, aye? And, hey, I want a catchphrase too, like that guy in Pulp Fiction. Something cool to say just before I do it, something to remember me by.”

“They’ll be dead, Cal. They won’t be remembering you to their pals.”

“Oh yeah. Baws. I’d got that one worked out an’ everything.”

“Okay, hit me with it, go on. What’s your French hitman catchphrase?”

“Je’Mapelle Vengeance.”