{"id":349,"date":"2011-04-18T18:24:36","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T18:24:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/?p=349"},"modified":"2011-04-18T18:27:59","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T18:27:59","slug":"the-99-cent-quandary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/2011\/04\/18\/the-99-cent-quandary\/","title":{"rendered":"The 99 Cent Quandary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Karen’s latest<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Karen Dionne is an interesting writer and a good soul. She\u2019s written a thoughtful piece<\/a> on Huffington Post today about how 99 e-books are bad for writers.<\/p>\n

Thoughtful, sensible\u2014but (in my opinion) wrong.<\/p>\n

First, you have to understand the overall transition that\u2019s taking place in the book business. In the traditional business plan, publishers controlled supply (they owned the press, supplied reviewers and filled the stores) and used that control to maintain higher prices and profits (for the company, not the writer). Only so many books appeared each month; publicity and marketing were controlled from the top down\u2014you knew about the big books coming months in advance.<\/p>\n

The ebook marketplace is one of unlimited supply, with the great majority of profit going to the writer\u2014if<\/em> the writer can find a readership. The gatekeepers are gone\u2014newspapers are dying and very few of the living maintain a book review section worth discussing anymore. And even those few don\u2019t deign to mention indie ebooks.<\/p>\n

The blogging universe is chaos like most of the Internet world\u2014eventually some reviewers will rise to the top but things aren\u2019t close to settled at the moment. So the hard part even for established writers these days is being heard over the din.<\/p>\n

For indie (or self-published, if you prefer) ebook writers, things are even tougher. We have neither name recognition nor a publisher sending out review copies to ensure even a trickle of attention. Our whole focus at the start has to be getting our names out any way we can.<\/p>\n

It turns out that there is a support structure in existence\u2014a network of blog sites that review ebooks. Type \u2018ebook reviews\u2019 into Google. Or type \u2018indie ebook reviews.\u2019 What you find is a hodgepodge of \u2018how to publish\u2019 and \u2018how to market your ebook\u2019 articles and reviews of e-reader hardware along with a few actual ebook reviewers. Now type in \u2018free <\/em>ebook reviews.\u2019 BAM! Suddenly, you\u2019ve got pages of reviews, download sites, videos, offers, etc. There\u2019s a world out there\u2014of free<\/em> content.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the 99\u00a2 title actually functions in this new marketplace; as the seawall against the tide of free<\/em> books. Sure, most of them might deservedly be free. Nonetheless there\u2019s an enthusiastic group of readers out there who might be enticed away to a 99\u00a2 book, but who definitely aren\u2019t considering (for the moment) a $2.99, $4.99 or certainly a $9.99 ebook (check the angry reviews on Amazon for publisher-released $9.99 ebooks\u2014that price point is never<\/em> going to fly).<\/p>\n

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My latest-only $1.99<\/p><\/div>\n

Once we get readers, we have the chance to move up. I have three books online now, two of them at 99\u00a2. They are short and I\u2019m unknown to the public. The third, at $1.99 is full-length and a real novel. Its sales are slower than the other two but my feet are dug in (for the moment). My two best will go live in the next week or two; those will be priced at $2.99.\u00a0 But I might offer a deal: buy one of the $2.99 titles and get one of the 99\u00a2 ones free.<\/p>\n

The idea is to be read<\/em>, to have people tell their friends and establish a baseline from which to grow. I\u2019ll have more books to sell as time goes on\u2014that\u2019s my focus.<\/p>\n

In twenty years, the marketplace will have sorted itself out some. You\u2019ll have a couple bloggers whose ebook taste coincides with yours (and expands upon it\u2014I found a lot of filmmakers over the years through Pauline Kael and David Thomson). If they say something\u2019s worth reading, it goes on your list. Prices will settle into several rational tiers that reflect a writer\u2019s success and the effort it takes to do good work.<\/p>\n

But I still think you\u2019ll see a thriving marketplace of 99\u00a2 books then. And at the moment, while we\u2019re living in the Wild West? The arguments in favor of a 99\u00a2 indie ebook, particularly for unpublished or underpublished authors, are very compelling.<\/p>\n

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Karen’s latest Karen Dionne is an interesting writer and a good soul. She\u2019s written a thoughtful piece on Huffington Post today about how 99 e-books are bad for writers. Thoughtful, sensible\u2014but (in my opinion) wrong. First, you have to understand …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,27,1,4],"tags":[25,254,19,26,13,8],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-books","category-my-books","category-the-digital-world","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-business","tag-e-books","tag-mystery","tag-publishing","tag-real-life","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}