Should the availability of a sample affect the price of a book?

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by HarryT

They are, but it still takes a non-trivial amount of effort to package them up as a sample. That has to be offset against the projected income from the book.

Huhn? No it doesn't. Not even if you're doing it all on your own. (Speaking as an author here.)

And if the author is offering the book through Kindle or Smashwords it takes more trouble to NOT offer the standard sample. Sampling is built into the system.

And even putting in a lot of work yourself, it's still something you choose to do to PROMOTE your work which does not add value to the work. You could also buy a superbowl ad, and maybe you'd want to charge the customer more to cover the cost, but the customer does not get anything more for it.

Camille

[sufue]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Sampling doesn't raise prices, Sufue. It mearly increases exposure and, therefore, sales potential. Cetainly in the book market, it's one form of free advertising. No special preparation is necessary, editorially or technically.

Actually, Neil, if you look more closely at my post, I indicated that for me a good sample may raise the ***price I am willing to pay***. And, if there are a lot of "me's" out there, then a good sample WILL raise the price that the author can ask, while still keeping their volume of sales up.

I think you may be confusing ***cost*** with ***price***. I definitely didn't comment on the additional cost (if any) of offering the sample - i.e. whether any special preparation is needed or anything else that would add to the ***cost***. Too many folks try to tie cost to price - i.e "it cost me this much to make and I'll add 15% to get the price I will ask". In reality, cost and price are NOT linked that way. Cost is what it costs to make something and price is what the market is willing to pay. Of course, if you are trying to make money, and your cost (plus a reasonable margin) is more than the price the market is willing to pay, then you have a problem.

But, I still argue that a good sample is going to raise the price I am willing to pay, and extending that argument, if there are a lot of folks who think it is a good sample, it WILL raise the price the author can ask.

- Sue

[neilmarr]

Thanks, Sue. I see your point.

But, I think you'll find that when a sample is offered by a pro house (no insult intended to our excellent independent authors who often have a little more flexibility when it comes to quick re-pricing), a cover price has already been set for paperback and ebook versions.

This has certainly been the case with my own small house over the past decade. We've published about 150 exclusive novels in paper and covering digital and, on average, I guess free samples have been offered at about fifty on line distribution points per title -- maybe many more. So that's at least 7,500 different places where you can download anything between a chapter or two or as much as 30% of a book. We also offer samples and other details in our own website's book store section (link below).

If you like what you see in a partial, I'm happy that it means you're willing to pay a little more for the full book than you might if you were to buy blind. But -- certainy in our case -- the price of an ebook ($5.99, any title, any format) is pre-established. Usually it represents about a third of paperback price, which is individually calculated on page count and print cost.

If anything, Sue, I think we'd reduce cover price according to high demand garnered from satisfied samplers rather than increase it because folks are excited by what they've seen and are willing to pay. Some costs, you see, are static and the more sales that are made, the more basic overheads can be spread out on a per-item basis.

This is why most publishing houses structure author royalties, for instance, according to certain fixed sales levels. Royalty tends to increase as sales rise and initial investment in professional time and money is covered and/or can be more thinly spread. The same principle could (but seldom does) apply to cover price.

Thanks for such a bright post. Best wishes. Neil