Posted By Scath on December 31, 2009

My little rant here is in response to a lot of comments I’ve seen while cruising around the web and one in particular I read today.

Paraphrased quote: “Digital products should be 1/10 to 1/20 the price of the physical version.”

Really? Are you serious, dude? That’s your idea of fair pricing?

Let me see: the last paperback book I bought at the grocery store checkout was LKH’s The Harlequin. The U.S. price is $7.99. I don’t remember what I actually paid for it, but am pretty sure there was a slight discount. I’ll go with that $7.99 cover price for my figuring.

This book has 443 pages total, although only 406 are the actual title story. The rest are cover, copyright, etc. information and an excerpt from Blood Noir. I’m going with the full page count, since it did cost to print them.

$7.99 divided by 443 is .018 cents per page.

1/10 of that is .0018 cents per page.

1/20 of that is .0036 cents per page.

The book’s size is roughly 4.25 x 6.75 inches. Converting one of my longer titles to that size and a similar font point, I end up with a 302 page book.

This particular title is one I have priced at $5.25, and let me note here that it does sell at that price. (Actually better than it did when Amazon had it on for 20% off on a regular basis when I initially released it there.)

Based on the above mentioned dude’s idea of fair pricing for digital works, this is what its price would be:

At 1/10: 54 cents.

At 1/20: $1.09.

Wow! You seriously think I should be pricing my ebooks like that? At the first, I can’t even distribute it anywhere but my own site. Most other distribution sites, like Amazon, have a 99 cent lowest allowed price.

The second would allow me to enjoy the wide distribution zone I currently do.

Selling it for $1.09 directly through Amazon (where the majority of my sales come from) would mean I’d receive 42 cents per sale. Take out my editor’s and the government’s shares and I’d pocket a whopping 18 cents per sale, compared to the $1.11 I do now.

Same title, same price through my own site here: 44 cents in my pocket after fees, editor and taxes.

While I don’t price based on the time spent writing, formatting, creating a cover and so on, I do keep sort of vague track of that time.

Let’s say I put about 6o hours total into that particular title (though it was probably more like 100).

Minimum wage here in Texas is currently $7.25. Sixty times that would be $435. Minus taxes, I’d be looking at about $304.50 (I’m self-employed, people, so I have to pay more taxes.).

To earn that $304.50 and sort of ‘break even’ for my effort in producing that title, it would have to sell:

692 copies here from my own site, or…
1, 692 copies on Amazon

My best month of sales on Amazon to this date was 30 copies, and that was spread out over ten different titles.

I’d be looking at YEARS to hit that ‘break even’ point of earning minimum wage for the hours I put into that particular ebook. But I’ll never really break even, because I’ll be tacking on hours promoting it in the meantime.

That $5.25 price is cheaper than a comparable paperback.

Sure, I could lower the price and hope that the sales increased exponentially in response – but what about those readers who bought it prior to that?

We expect the occasional sale/coupon for a percentage off. We look for that, don’t we?

But a permanent $4.16 cent price drop?

In my personal opinion, that’s kind of like peeing on those prior purchasers. If they noticed it, I’d bet none of them would ever buy one of my ebooks again, feeling like they’d gotten shafted. I wouldn’t blame them either.

In my opinion, pricing should show that the producer of whatever the product is believes it has value.

I know my time, just like yours, is valuable. After all we only get so long on this planet, right?

I think independents who consistently under price their works, as well as traditional publishers and independents whom consistently overprice their titles, are all hurting the ebook market.

One is telling readers that our time and effort isn’t worth jack.

The other is telling those readers that their opinions about pricing don’t matter, despite the fact those readers have spent $300 – $400 on a special device to read ebooks and are willing to buy them to fill their chosen device with – at reasonable prices.

I wouldn’t pay $30 for a hard back fiction book, no matter how new of a release it was; I’m certainly not going to pay that for the ebook version.

I’ll wait, check it out from the library (pay nothing!) or catch it from a used bookstore or the bargain bin at B&N for $5-10, thank you.

Other readers will do the same, though there will be those who choose the way of piracy.

I fully agree that ebooks should be cheaper than ‘dead tree editions’ because there aren’t any printing expenses associated with them.

However, there are some expenses in producing ebooks, aside from time and effort.

There’s the software to write/format them with, to create their cover design & editing expense (if you’re not getting it edited by a pro…well, you should be). You have to have a computer, an internet connection and electricity.

All of that costs money, not just time and personal effort, and yet you cannot take any of it into account when pricing your ebooks or you’ll massively overprice them.

I think I chose sensible pricing for mine, and I’ll stick with it, sir.

Your idea of ‘fair pricing’ is ridiculous.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Categories: Self-Pubbing
Tags: Amazon, e-books, traditional publishing, writers