[Steven Lake]

Do I have them available on Amazon and Smashwords? Well, yes and no. Yes, they were put up there, but no they're not available currently, and there's a reason for that. The long and short of it is this. When the books were first released they were priced out at $15.99 per suggestion of my publisher (the print version, not the ebooks) as that was the average selling price of most books that size. Well, it seems that unless you're Dan Brown or some other mega famous author, people won't even touch the book for that price. So we went looking to try and find out why this supposedly sweet price point wasn't working. Come to find out, we learned that right now the best you're going to get out of a book like mine (ie, a novel from a non-world-famous author) is $11.99, so we are in the process of repricing it right now to the lower price point. (again, print only version)

Now here's the real kick in the pants. In order to reprice the print version, we have to get a completely brand new ISBN, since you're apparently locked in on your "official" selling price once the ISBN is marked as live and you aren't allowed to change it. So we're going through a transition period right now as we wait for the old ISBN to go inactive and the new one to take its place. (apparently you have to do this when doing different editions of a book anyways, so it's more or less the same process, which is a PITA in my honest opinion.) So in short, that's why my ebook isn't out on the big ebook outlets right now, as I apparently can't sell ebooks for novels listed as "out of print". However, I can do that on goodreads, so it offers me a way around the blackout period caused by the ISBN changeover. (well, it's not really a "blackout" period, so much as it's a period when I can't sell the book because of the change in ISBN's)

Now as for why the ebook is priced the way it is, that is due to a majority recommendation from people here at Mobileread. A while ago I came to the site members and asked, "How should I price my ebooks?" The majority response was to sell my ebooks at 2/3rds the price of my print copies. Since the new cover price will be $12 (rounded) for the print version, I followed the rule that was suggested to me and priced the ebook at $8. Yes, I had a few who said that the ebook should cost no more than $5 regardless of the official cover price, a couple who said no more than $1.99, and there were even a few who recommended giving all my stuff away for free in ebooks (yeah, right), but they were all in the extreme minority.

So that's how I ended up with my $8 price point. Now if everyone had said, "You should price all your ebooks at $1.99 flat, and never go higher", I would have done it. Again, I'm trying to make my readers happy while at the same time trying to make a little money as I do. So now if an $8 ebook for a $12 book is too high, I'd like to find out why the 2/3rds rule is no longer in effect, and what the right pricing scheme should be for my ebooks. Because if the rule has changed to 50% less than the print book cost, or even 80%, then I'll do it, as long as it's within reason. I just need to know what this new "suggested" or "required" price point is.