Hi Steve
Thanks for your input.
I'm not suggesting for a moment that unpublished authors should be over charging for their work, they need to be affordable. Although I have seen some charging $20 plus. I also realise that publishers have overheads which inflate book prices.
My point is that 99 cents is a ridiculous amount of money to charge for something that has taken days to produce, or at least should have. Now I don't know if that book is crap or the best literature since Charles Dickens (Yes I know that's another debate!), but as a reader and buyer of books, I wouldn't touch it.
I think we as authors need to find a level of pricing which is fair to everyone. Fair to us for our work and fair to the reader who doesn't probably know us from a whole in the head. If you buy a Wilbur Smith or Lee Childs you know in advance what you can expect.
I have always pitched my books less than £3.00 which is around $4.50. Do I sell many? Compared to who? Probably not enough for the guys that want to charge less than a buck, but when I do sell a book I don't feel cheated and I don't think the buyer does either, well at least they've never told me so.
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