Any comments from new or established authors

[Falbe Publishing]

I have a fantasy series and I give away the first novel as a free ebook. Then I charge for the subsequent 3 novels in the series. It seems to work. As stated by others, I do this so people will give a little-known writer a chance. It removes a barrier. Sometimes I wonder if charging a $1 for the first book would be better. That way I would only be dealing with people actually willing to pay as opposed to the strictly free crowd, but I have yet to experiment with that. I don't want to go from getting sales from the series to getting passed over entirely. There's a lot of competition out there.

[HorridRedDog]

It reminds me of one of the first computer games, "Lemonade Stand".

Price to high, few will buy. To low, loose you money.

At the other end of time I remember a girl in a grocery store check out. The woman she was ringing up was buying tabloid. On the cover was a story about predictions.

The checkout girl said "Isn't she great! She gets $15,000 for just one hour. She must be really good!"

Moral of the story; If you can just sell a few books for $15,000 each all of the checkout girls will think that you are a GREAT writer.

Good luck with sales.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Falbe Publishing

Sometimes I wonder if charging a $1 for the first book would be better. That way I would only be dealing with people actually willing to pay as opposed to the strictly free crowd, but I have yet to experiment with that.

Well, Baen Books has been doing pretty well with giving away the first book (or several books) completely free. They seem to know what they're doing.

I think any price is a barrier for someone who might or might not want to sample a new author. It's not just the $1 price -- it's the whole process of actually giving that dollar to you that's problematic. Deciding to buy the book, setting up an account to buy it with, filling out forms, going through the checkout process, paying for it (which may require someone wearing pajamas to go find his pants and wallet), downloading it ... that's a lot of steps someone has to go through, several of them giving him a chance to back out before actually handing over the money, in order to read that sample book. If you were selling books from a table in a SF con dealers' room, that would be different; someone hands you a buck, you hand them a book, and it takes about 30 seconds. It's an impulse purchase. In the case of the ebooks, the actual amount of money involved isn't as much of a barrier as the inconvenience of the purchase process.

With Baen, you just go to the Baen Free Library, find your book, pick your format, and download it. No barriers. No five-minute process. No forms. No easy opportunities to back out. Their goal is to get sample books into the hands of prospective readers as quickly and efficiently as possible, so those readers can start reading while the impulse is on them.

If they think that's worth doing with books by some of the top authors in the field, I suspect it's probably worth doing for everyone.

As far as dealing with the people willing to pay versus the strictly free crowd:

How is that to your benefit? If the latter aren't going to pay for the book at any price, under any circumstances, then you're not losing a sale by giving them the book free. They wouldn't have bought it anyway. But maybe some of them might decide to buy the other books. Then you've gained a sale. So you can't lose, and you might win ... that sounds promising to me.

I'm one of the "tasters". I want to find out what a book and author are like before I plop down any money for it. In a brick-and-mortar store, I can read the first few pages -- or, sometimes more important, a random few pages in the middle. If Border's charged me a dollar each to thumb through a book ... well, they wouldn't sell me a lot of books. I don't know you from Adam. I don't know if you write like Isaac Asimov or Cherie Gierak. And I'm not going to pay a dollar (and five minutes of my time in the checkout) to find out.

Now, if you gave away the first one free, sold the others for $3 each, and had a bundle of all four, a short story or two, and some author's notes or something, for $10, you'd probably sell a bunch of the $10 bundles. People like thinking they're getting a package deal.

[NickSpalding]

I've got my book set at a $1.49.

This was largely an arbitrary decision, but seemed 'about right'. My book isn't a novel and is a bit out of left field content-wise, so have no idea if anyone will buy, so pricing is difficult. If I get no sales over a certain period of time I'll probably drop the price at some point.

I think being able to read samples is vital as I won't tend to buy a book from an unestablished writer unless I get a flavour for their work from the first few chapters.

[Jellby]

Why not $1.50?

[davidhburton]

Camille,

Sorry, I can be thick as a brick some days. NOW I understand!

OK, I gave it away as a free download at my site as PDF originally. Then I moved on to giving it away free with a coupon at Smashwords in all formats including .mobi (Kindle). I uploaded myself to Amazon rather than use Smashwords (I opted out of uploading to Amazon through Smashwords), but that doesn't mean you can't offer it at Smashwords itself.

Clear as mud?

Keep asking questions if you're interested. I'm quite happy to share everything I've done. Perhaps I should blog about it as I'm sure there will be others that may ask the same question. Mind you, I'm no bestseller, so I don't know that what I've done is really the right way to go about things.

@HRD, my book was selected at Goodreads for a group discussion over the Fantasy Book Club for June/July if you're interested. And that goes for anyone else that's interested.

Shayne/Camille, as for cross-over series, yes it's complicated to pitch that in the right way. My agent and I have had some struggles around that since editors see my book differently. It doesn't fall neatly into the fantasy genre and crosses into paranormal/thriller/horror. It's tough to sell that, but quite honestly you have to write what you love and hope that there's an audience for it. All of this could change tomorrow and yesterday's vampires will be tomorrow's angels.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Why not $1.50?

This.

When I see something at $price-ending-in-9, it doesn't make me think it's cheaper. It makes me think the seller believes I'm stupid. "But it's $19.99, that's nothing like $20!" It makes me think the seller is a weasel. Now, if you're Wal-Mart, I expect you to be a weasel. But who wants prospective customers to put them in the same category as Wal-Mart? When someone prices something at their real price, not something a penny cheaper, I get feelings of honesty and straightforwardness. All in all, were I the one setting the prices, that's what I would hope my customers would feel about me. Besides, weasels look so silly when they run, like the back half is trying to pass the front half; just one more reason not to be one!

[Falbe Publishing]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Well, Baen Books has been doing pretty well with giving away the first book (or several books) completely free. They seem to know what they're doing.

Thanks for the pep talk on keeping Book I free in digital format. When I set up my business a few years ago Baen was a site I studied and used as an inspiration.

[DaringNovelist]

David: thanks! That's what I wanted to know. One thing I'm thinking of doing is serializing the YA swashbuckler on a blog. I plan to write more serial type stories, and so I could continue that blog with other stories. (Also sequels to the first Anna book.)

Worldwalker: one thing you have to consider about pricing, is that vendors sometimes have pricing requirements. I understand Apple requires a price to end in .99. So if you want to get into the iBookstore, you HAVE to put the price at .99 or 1.99 or whatever. (1.49w won't do it).

Camille

The Adventure of Anna the Great; at Smashwords, or for Kindle
The Wife of Freedom; at Smashwords, or for Kindle

[joycedb]

Unfortunately, I have no control over the price as I was pubbed through a small, indie pub who paid for everything--editing, proofing, and cover art. Still, the price isn't especially high at 4.76 through Amazon. But I do understand the reluctance of people to buy unknowns. That's why I provide the first two chapters of my book on my website. I think the true value of someone's writing ability is evident by the time a potential buyer finishes two chapters.

Joyce
SERENDIPITY HOUSE

[HistoryWes]

I published His Robot Girlfriend on Feedbooks to get my name out there. I also wrote a novella prequel to my fantasy series as a free givaway. I'm starting to get some people buying my books on Smashwords. I plan to publish more books for sale, but I also plan on doing more free books. I'm getting a lot of readers who write me, who might not have otherwise found me, and I'm really enjoying the feedback.

[MartinParish]

I would say anything over $2 is unreasonable for an indie author. People still associate a publisher with a higher standard of quality because the quality of indie books is so variable - there are some really great ones but there's also a ton of un-proof-read drawer-cleaning. People just aren't going to spend more than $2 for something from an author they've never heard of even if the preview is really great.