Comments on: Top 100 ebook and ibook prices.

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:27:37 +0000

Graham, I gather your comment is in relation to me being willing to send a donation for the gap between your price and $4.99, well I just finished reading the Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey, and at the end he has some Q&A, and one of the questions he asks is why is the Wool Omnibus so cheap? (I think it was $5.99) In his answer he suggests people can donate more at his website if they want to. So there you go. Wool was an excellent collection of novellas by the way.

By: graywave

graywave — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 00:21:06 +0000

Jeez, Mate! When the Pope of Writing (John Scalzi?) gets to canonising a few saints, I hope your name's up there! 🙂

Yes, for a while I thought ebook prices might plummet to $0 too but it looks like that won't happen after all. Phew!

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 10:07:29 +0000

Hi Graham,

Part of the reason I do the survey is my great fear that eventually all ebooks will be free and authors would either have to put advertising in them or have a sponsor or beg for money on Kickstart to make money from writing. So $4.99 per ebook is the barest minimum I reckon an author should get for all the work they put into writing that novel.

I think I was lucky with your ebook Timesplash, as it was $4.99 when I bought it. I will pay less for novellas – I bought a 25,000 worder for $2.99, and I am yet to buy an ebook short story, buy yes I figure 99cents would be more than enough for a short story. I hope your sequel to Timesplash – I just went and checked and could not see it on your website – when it comes out is $4.99 or more. If not then I might have to break my rule. Perhaps I could use paypal to send you the difference.

I once downloaded a free ebook knowing that the author asked for a donation at the end. Turing Evolved by Dave Kitson. Great ebook – excellent original story. Very worthy of the $9 I sent to him using paypal.

By: graywave

graywave — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 23:59:43 +0000

I always read these updates with interest, Graham. Graphs showing prices over time (now, by retailer) could be interesting too.

Your resolution not to pay less than $4.99 has also often fascinated me. I assume the main reason is to support authors and help keep prices high (rather than some assumption about quality at different price levels). This makes me wonder if you have any views about book length vs price?

I self-publish and sell a few things through online retailers. I have short stories (usually 8-9K words) going at 99c, short story collections (3-6 stories) in the 99c to $2.99 range and one mega collection (which includes 2 novellas and a load of stories) at $4.99. So my pricing varies roughly with word count. (my two commercially published novels – at 100k+ words each – are currently on sale at $2.95 and $3.15, although I have no control over what the publisher (Pan Macmillan) is charging and I think these prices will approximately double once we're out of the double-launch period.

I suppose I'm suggesting that, to be fair to authors, you should set your not-below price as a price-per-word. At $4.99 for a novel (say 100k words) you're currently paying a minimum of 0.005c per word.

By: Anthony J. Langford

Anthony J. Langford — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 05:16:26 +0000

Rosie Project, what an overrated piece of rubbish. Ok so maybe it isn't rubbish but im sure its no better than thousands of other books. Ridiculous.

Thanks for the info Graham – if I ever go digital I will know where to look for all my info.

By: Graham Clements

Graham Clements — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:04:38 +0000

That's pretty much right Karen. There was a drop in prices of ebooks at the bottom end of the list – a lot more at 99 cents. And the ibooks getting bought in large numbers are more expensive than ebooks.

By: Karen Tyrrell

Karen Tyrrell — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:41:40 +0000

Thanks Graham, for all this painstaking research.
Looks like …Are Amazon prices going down?
and ibooks are generally more expensive?

What do you think?
Karen 🙂