Be honest.
How many of you have you gone onto Amazon or Barnes & Noble to buy an e-book everyone has been telling you you simply must read, only to balk at the price?
[raises my own hand]
And what was that price?
Mine was $4.99.
How many of you simply expect e-books to cost a few dollars?
I know I do. I mean, I paid a hundred dollars for my Kindle, and spend most of my time reading books in the public domain, because there’s no way I’m going to spend MORE money on e-books. That’s just ridiculous.
So imagine how abashed I was when I say this tweet come across my Twitter feed a few weeks ago that hit a little too close to home:
I, a book lover—someone who works in the industry—felt more comfortable tipping a barista than buying the fruits of someone’s painstaking intellectual labor.
Man, did I feel bad. Heck, I’m retroactively feeling bad for all the books I didn’t buy because I was picky about a few dollars.
Robert Swartwood, a USA Today bestselling author, tweeted this two and a half years ago, yet it is still making the rounds on social media.
In a medium that is defined by its fast-moving structure, there’s clearly something about this tweet that has kept it around far longer than any tweet I’ve ever seen.
So what is it about e-books that have caused such a disconnect between the work that goes into a book and the price consumers are willing to pay for it?
It can’t be just that an e-book is digital. After all, iTunes still makes money selling albums in mp3 form for $8, $10, or even $15.
Ignoring the big elephant in the room (ahem, Amazon) that has spearheaded the sale of e-books and driven down prices to take control of the market, I’d like to parse out exactly why digital books and digital music have such different pricing expectations.
Ultimately, it all comes down to format. Specifically, if a format is new and scary.
The written word has been around for thousands of years. Music has been around even longer. But until technology was advanced enough to record a performance and allow it to be replayed, music was intangible, something that was experienced.
When recordings began with the phonograph in 1877, music became a commodity, something to be bought and sold, to be used as the consumer thought fit. As recordings grew in popularity, the technology surrounding sound rapidly evolved.
In less than 150 years, there have been phonographs, electrical recording, magnetic tape recording, stereo and hi-fi recording, and digital recording. And that’s not even including the changing technology for playing the sounds (cassette tapes, 8-tracks, CDs, mp3s, LPs, and so many more.)
Audiences have been constantly introduced to new forms, new ways of listening to music, and that has kept the form somewhat separate from the value of the product as a whole. Just because music went from a physical form to an mp3 didn’t meant that the price dropped to nothing,
Books are different. From the beginning, the book has consisted of three intertwining aspects: words, ink, and paper.
The price of the book was at first determined by the labor it took to make the physical product—before the printing press, books were outlandishly expensive, as they needed to be hand-copied. Accounting for the creative effort didn’t come into play until much, much later.
Books have been around for thousands of years, and the printed book since 1455. That’s 560 years of a static form. Before the e-book, I bet consumers weren’t even aware that the content of a book wasn’t intrinsically linked to the page it was printed on.
So when the e-book became the new kid in town and exploded in popularity in recent years, there were no generations of precedent that uncoupled the form from the intellectual product. So, the inevitable change happened: no physical product resulted in a tiny price tag.
But we live in the information age. Heck, we don’t even have to carry a wallet if we don’t want (thanks Apple!) So what’s so wrong with paying more than pennies for a book, even if you can’t hold a printed page in your hand?
Nothing.
We don’t have to go to war with Amazon to change the pricing structure of e-books—we only have to educate consumers as Robert Swartwood did and reframe how they think about digital content.
If everyone begins to share why they’re happy to pay more than $0.99 for a book, that unbreakable link between words, ink, and paper will weaken. Readers will begin to focus more on the stories hidden within the pages of a book, rather than the pages themselves.
Readers, how do you feel about e-books? Sound off in the comments!
Actually, I think this article is completely off base.
The reason I don’t want to spend money on most e books is because, with the advent of this format, that almost everyone thinks they are a writer!
I don’t care if it took the author a year of effort, or 10 years. If you are not a good writer, your effort has meaningless value to me!
And I have bought some bad e books, thinking, well, it is only a few bucks, or 5 bucks, or what ever the amount is. Hell, I have bought tons of bad paper backs and hard cover books. And it has made me much more selective about what I buy. I generally stick to only the authors I know that I like.
To equate effort with value is completely mistaken.
It’s like watching watching weight lifting, for me. Yeah, there is intense effort and training, and heck, the people involved may be really good, but that doesn’t mean I am going to like it. And with authors, it is even worse, because with the advent of e books, everyone thinks they can put words down and be a writer.
Just my two cents.
Wow, Robert’s tweet really hit home. I’ll be jumping into the self-publishing fray for the first time this summer, and I’ve struggled with the debate between Free vs. .99 cents vs. 2.99. For me the bottom line is, I’ve worked my ass off to create this book so why give it away? Do I need to build a following? Yes, absolutely, and I can see offering this first book as a permafree as I release more books in this large series. But not starting out.
Thank you for this article!
Leslie
Another product that people seem to have no trouble plopping down money for: greeting cards. They balk at $3.99-$4.99 for a book that took untold hours to perfect, but have no trouble paying the same amount for a greeting card containing a couple of lines, a sentiment, for one occasion. A book can provide so much more bang for your bucks….
I do pay a good price for authors I know and follow. Especially if they are part of a series. However, since I read a lot, I do look for less expensive books to “fill in”. It is a great way to discover new authors; and a great way for new authors to gather a following.
However, regarding Archille Ducharmes comment. Yes, I have purchased (at a very low price) poor books. However I learned from earlier mistakes. I check date of publication, number of pages, read some reviews. I also download a sample and read it before deciding if I want to pay for the whole book. By doing this I find my errors in judgement to be few and far between. And since these are the lower-end books I am talking about it does not amount to much at all.
I think there’s more to it than just price. I sold a couple dozen downloads of my two most recent mysteries the first two weeks at 99¢. Plugged the hell out of them on Facebook and Twitter. Last week I took the price off and gave them away for five straight days. Plugged the hell out of them on Facebook and Twitter. I gave away a total of 1,778 downloads that week. Was 99¢ that big a deterrent? Something else is at work here. It’s psychological, obviously, but I don’t know what it means.
As a student of marketing I know the power of dropping the price of a book to free to generate some buzz and generate reviews. I know some people won’t buy a book if it doesn’t have any reviews.
As a writer who spent, who knows how many hours working on my book, I can’t bring myself to give it away. I know free doesn’t mean worthless but that is simply the way it feels to me.
What’s the difference from an “e-book” to a best selling “digital book” or “Kindle Book” by Louis L’Amour, Walter Isaacson or J.A. Johnstone, delivered to your Kindle wirelessly that you gladly pay from $4.99-$9.99 or more? I don’t get it. A good book is a good book. Is it the way it is being named; ‘e-book’ vs. ‘digital book’?
Agree with Brad. If books are good, they will sell. Kris Rusch has a great new book out called Discoverability with the best discussion on book pricing I’ve seen. There is a time and a place for free and 99 cents, but as a rule, it’s not a sustainable strategy.
Excellent post. People pay handsomely for bottled water, for a fancy coffee, for a cocktail or an expensive beer. Yet they balk at spending the same price, or less, on a book that will give them hours of entertainment and perhaps even change their lives a little.
Amazon couldn’t care less if it devalues books and damages the ability of authors and publishers to receive fair compensation for their work. Books are just another useful widget to the Zon.
Yes there are lots of 99 cent and free ebooks out there. Some of them are wonderful. 99 percent of them are barely readable junk. The problem for good writers trying to cut through the clutter is that it takes a lot more than dirt-cheap begging and free books to build a readership. It takes time and hard work and writing one good book after another.
It’s a good argument.
We’re still left with the question, how do you make money selling a book? Or music, TV, film? If you find an answer, let me know… http://www.peterlynchinvestor.com
Thanks
A few stray thoughts:
1) It’s not so much the presence or absence of a physical product, but rather how easy the product is to obtain / reproduce, that affects our perception of its value. Consider the comparative price-tags of an original oil painting, versus a limited-edition canvas print of that painting, versus a postcard of that painting, versus a digital image of that painting.
2) The written (or rather typed) word itself is tremendously devalued in our society, because typing (and the electronic devices that make it possible) have become a ubiquitous part of our everyday lives. There is at least a vague public awareness that it takes specialist equipment and skills to create music or movies, but anyone can create a document with words in it.
3) The digital distribution of art of all kinds has made piracy much easier. We used to tape songs off the radio / shows off the TV and think nothing of it. Many people who have grown up with internet piracy as the norm don’t see why they should pay for something that they can so easily obtain for free.
4) As commenter Archille Ducharme illustrates, the value of an artist’s work is much more subjective than the work of any profession that can be measured in practical terms – such as, say, a plumber or an accountant. When the quantifiable costs of reproducing a work of art are removed or made invisible, we’re forced instead to ascribe a financial value to the art itself, and where do you start? What, for example, is the dollar value of “Pride and Prejudice”, versus the dollar value of “The Old Man and the Sea”?
5) There’s an age-old preconception that art and commercialism should not mix. Some people are only too happy to support their favourite artists, but many others are quick to accuse artists of pan-handling or ‘selling out’ if they want to make money from their art.
You’ve convinced me. My next job is to raise the price of my ebooks. A couple of them, anyway.)
So why do I have no problem paying $8.99 a month for an Unlimited Reading Scribd subscription, but before I signed up, I would have a problem paying $2.99 for a book?
Probably because I don’t notice the $8.99 coming off my account every month. I just read and read and read.
Amazon’s “Buy Now With 1 Click” helps that condition a little, but then again, I despise companies that store my credit card details. I’d rather type them in every time, because that’s more deliberate, and I feel it gives me more control over my spending.
We’re a funny lot, us humans.
$6 for a latte??? I’ll gladly spend $4 on a book but a $6 latter is way overboard! 😉
I recently published my first novel. Took me four years to write it, perfect it, get it formatted, have a cover created. I’ve put a lot into this book. When it came to pricing– especially for a NEW SELF PUBLISHED author, I knew pricing the book above $3 would be a mistake.
Because I know myself. If I don’t know an author enough to know I am going to get a quality piece of work, I am not spending a lot on a book. That won’t be the first or last book I buy today, so it needs to entice me, price-wise first. I’ve spent up to $10 on an eBook… for an author I know and love. A new author? Not on your life. And if there is no sample available so I can check it out first, it is a no-go.
So I priced my book at $2.99. Enough that it is a serious contender, not wallowing in the free and .99cent books. But low enough that people might think ah, it’s $3, why not?
I didn’t get a lot of sales. Mostly friends and family and then there was a HUGE drop off. I got a huge surge of sales when I lowered the price to $1.99. Do I feel some kind of way about four years of work, 100K words, multi pov, full length novel going for $2? You bet I do.
Do I want to sell books? You bet I do. I’m just… getting rich very very slowly.
I am not asking readers to make up for four years of writing and the work it took to get the book to them.So then when I go buy my next book, I don’t really care how long it took the author to write it. They could have written it in months or years…makes no difference. Books are not priced based on how hard it was to write it. It’s priced based on its value in the market.
Lattes aren’t priced by how long it takes to make them. They’re priced based on how much it costs to produce them and their popularity. If you’re a NEW author, your latte might be a dinky lil bad tasting bitter pill. No one is paying $6 for that.
As a reader, I have no problem paying $9.99 or more for an ebook or $19 for a print edition. If I have learned just one small thing from the book, it is well worth the price and I will give the book a 4-star or 5-star review on Amazon.com. And if I really like the book, I often purchase both the ebook and print editions.
As a writer, I refuse to get into low-ball pricing. I won’t participate in either Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Select. I also refuse to price any of my ebooks below $5.97 unless it is a book of quotations. Offering my books for free or 99 cents or even $2.99 would cheapen what I have to offer.
Marketing guru Seth Godin called the strategy of low-ball pricing the act of
“Clawing Yourself to the Bottom.”
Seth stated:
“Trading in your standards in order to gain short-term attention or profit isn’t as easy as it looks. Once-great media brands that now traffic in cheesecake and quick clicks didn’t get there by mistake. Respected brands that rushed to deliver low price at all costs had to figure out which corners to cut, and fooled themselves into thinking they could get away with it forever. As the bottom gets more and more crowded, it’s harder than ever to be more short-sighted than everyone else. If you’re going to need to work that hard at it, might as well put the effort into racing to the top instead.”
Indeed, clawing your way to the bottom costs you the chance to make a decent living. It also costs you your reputation. I have zero interest in dealing with people who cheap out in everything they purchase for themselves.
This quotation also applies:
“People that pay for things never complain. It’s the guy you give something to that you can’t please.”
— Will Rogers
In short, when your book doesn’t measure up, the answer may be to charge a lot less for it and loan it out through subscription services. If you have a great book, however, the answer is to charge a lot more for it than the substandard competition charges for theirs. At the same time, there is no need to loan out a great book through subscription services because people who appreciate quality are willing to pay for it. This strategy has helped sell over 15,000 copies of my ebooks in the last two years and over 850,000 copies of my print books since I started self-publishing in 1989.
Ernie J. Zelinski
The Prosperity Guy
“Helping Adventurous Souls Live Prosperous and Free”
Author of the Bestseller “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free”
(Over 250,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
and the International Bestseller “The Joy of Not Working”
(Over 280,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)