What did you blog about today?

Jo Zebedee said:
Some of the research that I've been throwing up for the new course I'm running, and why I'm really, really glad I didn't get a trad offer as a debut:

ON DODGING BULLETS
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Good blog, Jo... one of those whatifs that can never be answered. If the big 5 had taken Inish, and it had been a runaway success (as it should have been) you'd naturally think differently. We'll never know!

But your point about the publisher's prices is aposite. I went to Theakstone's Old Peculier crime conference last year, and one of the speakers impressed me so much, I thought I'd buy her book. Went to the tent on the lawn where they were selling all the featured authors and picked it up. Hardback £20.00. I don't think it could have been over 70,000 words, so I searched on my phone for the ebook. £12.99, which I thought was outrageous. I went to the library a month later and borrowed it from there. Fabulous book, but I'm glad I didn't buy it. Haven't seen it on any best-seller lists, either.
 
Jo Zebedee said:
Some of the research that I've been throwing up for the new course I'm running, and why I'm really, really glad I didn't get a trad offer as a debut:

ON DODGING BULLETS
Click to expand...

Boneman said:
Good blog, Jo... one of those whatifs that can never be answered. If the big 5 had taken Inish, and it had been a runaway success (as it should have been) you'd naturally think differently. We'll never know!

But your point about the publisher's prices is aposite. I went to Theakstone's Old Peculier crime conference last year, and one of the speakers impressed me so much, I thought I'd buy her book. Went to the tent on the lawn where they were selling all the featured authors and picked it up. Hardback £20.00. I don't think it could have been over 70,000 words, so I searched on my phone for the ebook. £12.99, which I thought was outrageous. I went to the library a month later and borrowed it from there. Fabulous book, but I'm glad I didn't buy it. Haven't seen it on any best-seller lists, either.
Click to expand...

The price point thing is huge and, in my constant up and downing on the subject, really putting me off of conventional publishing. I remember a time when I was trying to persuade people on BFB to buy The Goddess Project - one guy was baulking really severely at the price. I dunno if that was one of the times that influenced Jo in writing this article but it sure stuck in my head. Right or wrong, the price point for unknown authors is pretty low right now.

But then, SP doesn't even get you in the library. Swings and round-abouts. The only answer seems to be as big a personal marketing and supporting machine as you can find for whatever happens.
 
The Big Peat said:
I was trying to persuade people on BFB to buy The Goddess Project - one guy was baulking really severely at the price
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Rightly so at the time**. Thankfully an Irish fiery (that was meant to be "fairy" but, uhm, I'll leave it;)) made me aware of it, and it didn't take much to persuade the publisher to cut it to less than 50% that -- which, among other things, suggests to me that many publishers don't understand how book buyers behave or think.

** this was the US ebook price pre-launch
 
I don't mean to be fiery. But I am passionate about these sorts of things.... :D (It's the Norn Irish in me....;))

Anyway, no, @peat, this was research I threw up this week but it did back up thoughts I had after the BFB thread - that pricing is a big vulnerability for writers, and one that can't always be controlled.

I looked up a debut who is being very feted at the moment, and her ebook is £7.99. Now, this is an author I want nothing but the best for. But for that money, I want something more than an e-file. And I fear that here is someone hugely talented being closed out. :(
 
Well, think about my publishers re-issuing The Queen's Necklace as an ebook for $12.00. It's true that the book had never been offered in electronic form before, but it had been OP for thirteen years. Who was going to buy such an old book at that price? Especially when my editor left between the time when it was decided to reissue it and its actual publication, and no one at HarperCollins was going to push for publicity for an orphaned book? It was like they made up their mind to kill the book, without, you know actually killing it so that I could have gotten the rights back.

Then a year or two later they lowered the price to $3.99 and they didn't even tell me so that I could publicize it at the lower price. I found out by accident.
 
Teresa, that's fascinatingly and disgustingly precise. [Also, to a separate post, that lack of communication from your publisher was pretty poor].

Jo, I know what you mean. E-books at 2.99 or 3.99 are one thing, but more than that and (possibly excepting enormo-books like the Stormlight Archive entries) I'd rather buy a real one. I get e-books for convenience, cutting down on storage space, getting instant delivery and a lower price. When I see e-books costing the same as a paperback, it just puts me off (and makes the publisher look a greedy swine).

E-book pricing does seem to be a question of in what way you want to be wrong. [For the serial, I've decided to go free, 99p, 99p, with the paid sections a little over 10k words each. If it gets sufficient sales I'd like the next (paid) parts to be rather larger, but the initial story arc is the right size and I can't hack it into more pieces or add padding].
 
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