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

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Given that it takes time and effort to produce the sample, clearly it can only make the book more expensive as a result.

Are these samples you are talking about not just the first chapters of the book?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Are these samples you are talking about not just the first chapters of the book?

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.

[astra]

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.

Just copy and paste a bit of text and click create a book in the same s/w that was used for creating the original costs a lot of money?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by astra

Just copy and paste a bit of text and click create a book in the same s/w that was used for creating the original costs a lot of money?

Not a lot of money, no, but neither is it free, unless the person doing it places no value on their time. Just saying that it all has to be considered as a part of the cost of producing the book.

[neilmarr]

Promotion takes imagination, skill, determination, energy, time, nerve and sometimes money, Harry. Believe me, offering an extract or the first part of a book as a free taster is the easiest promo move of all. It's a simple cut-n-paste job and the time it takes to learn where to most effectively place it. It's so simple that push-button operations like Smashwords just ask what percentage of the work you will offer for free download and then hit the corresponding key for automatic posting of the sample. As easy as falling off a high bar stool. Neil

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Promotion takes imagination, skill, determination, energy, time, nerve and sometimes money, Harry. Believe me, offering an extract or the first part of a book as a free taster is the easiest promo move of all. It's a simple cut-n-paste job and the time it takes to learn where to most effectively place it. It's so simple that push-button operations like Smashwords just ask what percentage of the work you will offer for free download and then hit the corresponding key for automatic posting of the sample. As easy as falling off a high bar stool. Neil

That was how I assumed it would work. Is it intelligent enough to not break off in the middle or a sentence, or do you need to check for things like that manually?

[sufue]

A sample can RAISE the price I'm willing to pay for a book, but it can also LOWER it - often even to zero, so that I don't buy it at all. So, in that case, why take the risk and offer a sample at all? The answer is simple - for a new author (new to me, at least), I almost never buy a book without a sample.

However, the length of the sample, beyond a chapter or so, isn't going to change the price I'm willing to pay at all. I agree with rhadin above that all I'm really looking for is a quick check that the author writes in a style I like and uses decent grammar so I don't get distracted while reading, and that the e-book is reasonably well made without a lot of typos or messed up paragraphs to annoy me. So, OP's author's theory of "long sample = gotta buy the book even at a lot higher price" doesn't work for me.

And general theory aside, I agree with a fair number of folks on this thread that $7.99 is a lot for a new author on an indie book site. I probably wouldn't even look at the sample unless something about the synopsis were unusually compelling.

[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.

And it follows the tried-and-tested tradition of back cover text, reviews and, of course, leafing through treebooks in a high street store before deciding to buy or not. The only difference online is that the prospective buyer has more time and more material to browse.

Of course, you can go the extra mile, too -- but even then, it's not too difficult for the author or publisher and all it costs is a little time and imagination.

For instance, if you pop into my own BeWrite Books publishing site (linked below), and visit the book store section, you'll find that when you click on a title's cover, you're offered a whole heap of stuff to help you decide -- before buying -- whether or not your dollars and reading time will be well spent:

Back cover text, reviews, extracts, paperback and ebook format options and prices, and even information on the author and his/her publishing history. You can also read there about the publishing house itself and how it selected the title you're interested in and the editorial, design and technical work invested in it.

I think this is only fair. Depending on the length of a work, we might be asking someone to invest ten or twelve hours of precious free time in what's on offer.

Cheers. Neil

[nashira]

The logic, intentional or not, behind the sample=more expensive pricing scheme seems to mean that those who want to buy the book end up paying more for those who (for example) read half way through and said "stuff it".

I certainly believe authors can (and will) price as their hearts content, but I don't believe that they'll ultimately get more money by such a method if they believe expensive or higher priced ebooks are the way to go... and this from a person who is willing to pay for her books, too. In Australia, books are often quite expensive, for example, so I buy one or two every few months, if that. I can read a five hundred page book in a night, so obviously the amount I read isn't the issue. I am increasingly likely, however, to buy an ebook instead or simply poke around all the freebies that are to be had. Why?

Because buying a bunch of ebooks (even at 3-6 dollars each, I'm not suggesting authors should charge only tiny amounts) is far less likely to send one to the poor house. But ebooks samples shouldn't increase the cost, because I've quite happily wandered around "real" book stores and read several chapters to see if I liked any given book. It makes me more likely to buy a book in paper, and more likely to buy a book in ebook format if I can read some of it beforehand.

...also the "I want to pay less because I've read half of it" argument, makes no sense to me.

[J. Strnad]

With Amazon and Smashwords the samples are automatic. You literally do nothing to create them other than to click a box, maybe choose a percentage. My Amazon sample breaks at a logical point. Don't know about the Smashwords sample, but if it cuts off mid-word, I don't really care. It's like sampling an iTunes song...it plays for so long and then quits, it doesn't wait for a verse change or anything.

[HamsterRage]

This is one of the strange phenomena of the Internet world. It used to be that the publishers and the book stores set the price of the books. Now authors themselves get to say how much they want.

So expect some strange things, because people that have a big part of themselves invested in something are likely to over-value it and at least some quantity of those people aren't going to have the detachment to try to be reasonable.

Personally, I see samples as putting ebooks on an even footing with pbooks. In a bookstore I can flip through and get a feel for how the writer's style works and whether or not I can get into it. Usually I can make a fairly accurate call within a few seconds and just a couple of paragraphs. I'm not particularly methodical about it, but I think I usually flip to some dialogue to see how natural it feels, and then look for a couple of more descriptive paragraphs to make sure that stuff isn't too boring and whether the "voice" of the narrative appeals to me.

Sometimes I can tell if I'll like an author within a few words. Roger Zelazny was like that for me, I was hooked before I'd finished the first paragraph of "Guns of Avalon". On the other hand, the first 4 words of "The Da Vinci Code" was all I needed to know it wasn't going to be a literary masterpiece (but I persevered because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about).

The idea that a sample might be big enough that a reader would become hooked from reading the sample alone, and therefore willing to pay more to see how the book comes out is interesting. But it seems to me a tactic that's more likely to be successful if the writing is outstanding and the story especially compelling - qualities that by themselves would make the book worth a premium price even without the big sample gimmick.

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It's not *just* about hooking anybody; the purpose of a *free* sample is to show off the quality of the product. It should be as much as needed to achieve that and no more. Otherwise, you're really doing the "crippleware" version of shareware.

I think you've got it reversed here.

First, "just" is misplaced. A short free sample is JUST for showing that you can spell. It doesn't allow for any other purpose. The reader can't tell anything about your plotting and pacing and follow through.

Second a short sample really is crippleware, because it doesn't actually let the user do anything with it - it only gives a spoon fed sample. The reader can't use the product as he or she would in life. While I see nothing wrong with crippleware, it has limited usefulness.

Third - and most important - it limits what the consumer can do with the sample. Someone like you, who only wants to make a quick check for "writing quality" can do so. Someone who judges writing quality as an ability to handle character development and plot arcs also has the ability to do so, which they can't with a short sample.

Across all kinds of sales practices, short samples are notorious for being false come ons. It's easy to create those. It takes guts to let your reader really judge the full value of the product.

But, to get back to the point, it's irrelevant to a book review and should not be taken into consideration, and it's also irrelevant to the price.

Camille

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by DaringNovelist

I think you've got it reversed here.

First, "just" is misplaced. A short free sample is JUST for showing that you can spell. It doesn't allow for any other purpose. The reader can't tell anything about your plotting and pacing and follow through.

Second a short sample really is crippleware, because it doesn't actually let the user do anything with it - it only gives a spoon fed sample. The reader can't use the product as he or she would in life. While I see nothing wrong with crippleware, it has limited usefulness.

Third - and most important - it limits what the consumer can do with the sample. Someone like you, who only wants to make a quick check for "writing quality" can do so. Someone who judges writing quality as an ability to handle character development and plot arcs also has the ability to do so, which they can't with a short sample.

Across all kinds of sales practices, short samples are notorious for being false come ons. It's easy to create those. It takes guts to let your reader really judge the full value of the product.

But, to get back to the point, it's irrelevant to a book review and should not be taken into consideration, and it's also irrelevant to the price.

Camille

That's an interesting point of view. Is it really possible to make a decision about how an author handles character development without actually reading the entire book, or at least spoiling the ending?

Usually when I'm in a book store, I'll spend at most 3 or 4 minutes leafing through a book to decide if it looks like it's worth buying. I figure that the most I'm ever going to get out of it is a feel for the style (including vocabulary, spelling and stuff like that) and a very rough idea about what the book is about. Basically, if I like that stuff enough to buy the book, I'm hoping that the plot will be compelling and the characters interesting and fluid enough to make it all worthwhile. I figure if the prose is a disaster, then the more subtle elements of good writing are probably going to fail as well, although the reverse does not always hold true.


A couple of people have raised the point that the sample may deliberately not be representative of the entire book. Does that really happen? Does anyone have any examples where they think the sample has been significantly better edited and vetted than the book as a whole?

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by Tim_A

If the free sample is half the book, then the price for the rest should be less surely, because you're only buying half a book... To charge extra is tantamount to saying "I have you over a barrel, and I' m going to fleece you for as much as I can", and although I might buy the book once, I'd definitely think twice about buying from that author again.

Uh, this might make sense if the publisher gave you half a book and claimed it was the whole book. But if you knew it was a sample going in... how is that the author's fault? How did the author put you over a barrel?

I mean, I agree that offering a big sample doesn't justify raising the price, but it also doesn't justify lowering the price. The price is the price, the sample is the sample. The sample's only relation to the price is that it helps the reader evaluate whether the book is worth the price.

Camille

[DaringNovelist]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

A couple of people have raised the point that the sample may deliberately not be representative of the entire book. Does that really happen? Does anyone have any examples where they think the sample has been significantly better edited and vetted than the book as a whole?

Oh, yeah. But not necessarily intentionally. It's very common in the slush pile. First of all, it's built into the writing process. All the time you're writing the book you're probably polishing that first chapter. Plus you've likely shown it to more people and got more feedback. AND when the time comes to polish your "partial" (which is 1-3 chapters and a synopsis) you probably got more advice on making it more appealing.

Furthermore, it's easy to write a really good first chapter, when you don't worry about the follow up.

Now, it's also common for a young and inexperienced writer to write a first chapter that just wanders all over the place as they get to know the characters and situation. Even good writers do that, but they cut the first chapter before they show anybody.

As for being able to know if they can handle plot and character arcs before reading the whole book - sure I can tell by the end of the first act if they know what they're doing. It's no guarantee that they have a great ending, but if you don't see any development in the first act, they can't plot, and they can't do character. The other place most beginners lose it is just after the first act. It's a natural stalling place, since things tend to slow down after a major shift in direction.

Camille