Are eBooks Too Cheap?

I luv Twitter!


Not only can you network and share your thoughts but you can also pick up on some useful and interesting information, which is what I have done this weekend.


Looking at, 'The Trends' a few nights ago, I found an interesting article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/ebooks-cheap-price_n_1160383.html?ref=books), arguing the pro's and con's of selling your eBooks at 99 cents or for free.

Reading through the article, the main points seemed to be:

• Traditional publishers are scared at independent authors selling their books so cheaply as most of the public (especially in the current climate) will obviously go for the cheaper options, leaving the traditional publishers struggling to gain custom,

• Some independent publishers are not happy to give away their work for free (or for 99 cents) as they feel that the time and effort they have put into creating the book has been in vain,

• Some publishers (both traditional and independent) have a problem with books priced at 99 cents, believing that they maybe of poor quality due to many of the books in this bracket been of substandard value, and;

• Before an eBook is published, "there are other associated costs to publishing a quality book, including cover artists ($125-3000), editors ($800-5000), marketing, etc. If you add up the average cover cost of $350, average editing job of $1400, then divide by 34 cents, the author would have to sell 5,134 books just to break even, and that’s nearly impossible without an additional amount for advertising".

After reading this article, I was left with more questions than I started with. However, after doing my own research into the self publishing world and using my experiences with traditional publishing houses, I realised the following:

• Looking at the top 10 successful self publishing stories, all of the authors used the same approach of setting their first books as 99 cents to get readers interested then increased the price, once they had a following,

• If you do the research of the other books in your genre and these are priced at 99 cents and you place yours at $9.99, you are already alienating your target audience as they would want to see why your book is priced so high and if you do not have reviews from readers to back up your book price, you will find it difficult to sell any copies, and;

• Although some traditional publishing houses claim that they do not rate books becoming successful in the 99 cents category, of the self publishing sector, this should make you wonder why they feel so strongly about this? As many traditional publishing houses do not take on new authors as they cannot foresee your success, however, if you already have success with your 99 cents books and have obtained a following, this should be the green light for all traditional publishing houses to snap at your heels with offers as many have done with Amanda Hocking and John Locke!

So, although everyone is different, my approach will be sell the first copies of my novels at 99 cents and then when I gain a following increase steadily, depending on the number of pages!

Selena Kitt

Selena Kitt is a bestselling and award-winning author of erotic fiction.

She is one of the highest selling erotic writers in the business. With half a million ebooks sold in 2011 alone, she is the crème del la creme of erotica!

Her writing represents everything from the saucy to the scandalous, but watch out-this temptress also has sharp claws and her stories often include exciting edges and twists that take readers to new, provocative depths.

When she's not banging away at her keyboard, Selena runs an innovative publishing company and in her spare time, she devotes herself to her family, husband and four children.

Her books EcoErotica (2009), The Real Mother Goose (2010) and Heidi and the Kaiser (2011) were all Epic Award Finalists.

Her only gay male romance, Second Chance, won the Epic Award in Erotica in 2011.

Her story, Connections, was one of the runners-up for the 2006 Rauxa Prize, given annually to an erotic short story of "exceptional literary quality," out of over 1,000 nominees, where awards are judged by a select jury and all entries are read "blind".

Stephen Leather

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers.

At university, he attempted to write, however he found this difficult and put it down to lack of life experience.

He didn’t start to write again until he was in his late twenties and started to work as a journalist.

Although, he studied biochemistry at university, he decided against that career path and went to train at the Daily Mirror on their Graduate Training Scheme and trained to be a journalist.

He wrote his first book, which was bought by Harper Collins and he never looked back!

His career to date stands as follows: he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shoveled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant and worked for the Inland Revenue.

Throughout his life, he has traveled around the world, had more jobs than one average person has in a life time, however he has always had writing as his passion.

From being a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong to being a bar man, he has led an interesting life so far.

Although he has always had writing in his life, he began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages.

He has also written for television shows such as, 'London's Burning', 'The Knock' and the BBC's 'Murder in Mind' series.

Amanda Hocking

Amanda Hocking

Twenty-six-year-old self-publishing sensation Amanda Hocking made headlines earlier in 2011, when it was revealed that the then-unsigned author (she now has a contract with St. Martin’s Press) had managed to sell more than a million copies of her paranormal novels, which were once rejected by publishers — as e-books.

Starting her first book in 2009, Amanda went into overdrive and the start of 2010, she had a grand total of 17 unpublished novels, all gathering digital dust on the desktop of her laptop.

After receiving rejection letter after rejection letter on April 15 2010, Hocking made her book available to Kindle readers on Amazon's website in her bid to raise the cash for the Muppets trip, she desperately wanted to go on. Following tips, she'd gleaned from the blog of JA Konrath, an internet self-publishing pioneer, she also uploaded to Smashwords which allowed her to gain access to the Nook, Sony eReader and iBook markets. 

It wasn't that difficult. 

A couple of hours of formatting, and it was done.

Within a few days, she was selling nine copies a day of My Blood Approves, a vampire novel set in Minneapolis. 

By May, she had posted two further books in the series, Fate and Flutter, and sold 624 copies. 

June saw sales rise to more than 4,000 and in July she posted Switched, her personal favourite among her novels that she wrote in barely more than a week. It brought in more than $6,000 in pure profit that month alone, and in August she quit her day job.

By January, last year, she was selling more than 100,000 a month. Being her own boss allowed her to set her own pricing policy – she decided to charge just 99 cents for the first book in a series, to attract the  readers, and then increase the cover price to $2.99 for each sequel. 

Though that's cheap compared with the $10 and upwards charged for printed books she gained a much greater proportion of the royalties. Amazon would give her 30% of all royalties for the 99-cent books, rising to 70% for the $2.99 editions – a much greater proportion than the traditional 10 or 15% that publishing houses award their authors. 

You don't have to be much of a mathematician to see the attraction of those figures: 70% of $2.99 is $2.09; 10% of a paperback priced at $9.99 is 99 cents. Multiply that by a million – last November Hocking entered the hallowed halls of the Kindle Million Club, with more than 1m copies sold – and you are talking rolling in the money!

Although, Hocking is a self publishing success, in the end she became so burned out by the stress of solo publishing (having to do all the editing, formating, designing the book covers, keeping up with the constant marketing and making sure she replied to her fans emails) that she has turned for help to the same traditional book world that previously rejected her and which she was seen as attacking. 

For $2.1m, she has signed up with St Martin's Press in the US and Pan Macmillan in the UK to publish her next array of books. The deal kicks off this month with a paperback version of Switched.