Book marketing - prices and formats

[paranoid marvin]

I remember reading about the costs of computer games when they were only available from shops. The costs of creating the media, the cost of the packaging, the transport costs, the retailer's price cut etc. All were used as a reason to justify the price of games on the shelf. Then they went all digital ,and the price stayed the same; or even increased.

To a large extent, the price of anything is determined by how much people are willing to pay.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Am I just too sensitive to these things?

I'm just running my periodic new book purchases and I have found a couple of disquieting books marketing issues;

1. Artifact Space by Miles Cameron - paperback is £7.21 and ebook £8.99. Now there has been much discussion around the pricing of ebooks and I can understand them being on a par with paperbacks, but more than them? No way! Also £8.99 for a not very well established author (based on GR ratings) is just too much anyway. I won't be buying the book no matter how good it is. I refuse on principle to be ripped off.

2. Activation Degradation by Marina J Lostetter. I loved her debut Noumenon books but this has been (incorrectly apparently) compared with Murderbot in the blurb and it seems the publishers figure they can therefore get away with Murderbot pricing: no ebook available according to Amazon, only audio and paperback with the paperback (384 pages) at £14.09. Again I refuse to be ripped off. Lostetter's Noumenon books were good but she's still only just getting established and I don't pay that sort of price for any of the established authors like Asher, Hamilton, Tchaikovsky, Bear, Weber etc. so why do they think I will pay that for this?

3. Finder by Suzanna Palmer. Whilst the paperback price is, in this case sensible £5.17, it is not available as an ebook; Audio, hardback and paperback only. Again I'm not buying this because I only read ebooks nowadays.

Is it just me or do each of these marketing/sales decisions seem just a little silly to others? Apart from the prices that's two relatively recently published books not being made available as ebooks. That to me is just crazy.

I think that most marketing/sales decisions are made with some careful consideration, but sometimes we have to think round corners to see the sense.

Is this a case like with hardbacks and paperbacks? The more expensive hardback goes on sale first, then the cheaper (and usually more convenient to carry around) paperback. If both were put on sale at the same time, likely all the hardbacks would stay on the shelf. This way you get people buying the physical book first.

I also think that the pricing of books is also done to take into consideration their value in a sale. So maybe that ebook you had your eye on at £8.99 you'll keep bookmarked for the sale - when it gets sold for its true value of say £4.99. And as well as buying that one, you'll maybe buy a few more at the same time.

I think part of the secret to successful sales pitches is in convincing us that they aren't.

 

[Vertigo]

I think that most marketing/sales decisions are made with some careful consideration, but sometimes we have to think round corners to see the sense.

Is this a case like with hardbacks and paperbacks? The more expensive hardback goes on sale first, then the cheaper (and usually more convenient to carry around) paperback. If both were put on sale at the same time, likely all the hardbacks would stay on the shelf. This way you get people buying the physical book first.

I also think that the pricing of books is also done to take into consideration their value in a sale. So maybe that ebook you had your eye on at £8.99 you'll keep bookmarked for the sale - when it gets sold for its true value of say £4.99. And as well as buying that one, you'll maybe buy a few more at the same time.

I think part of the secret to successful sales pitches is in convincing us that they aren't.

No in each of the cases listed the paperback has already been published. I expect and accept the elevated price until the paperback gets published. However here one of the eBooks, Artifact Space, is more expensive than the paperback (less than the hardback though) and in the other the eBook, Activation Degradation, appears to have been withdrawn from the UK market but not the American one. And that is looking on both Amazon and Kobo. And this is still the case with the American eBook cheaper than the paperback but both unusually expensive. So very strange.

End result is that I just won't buy. It's not that I can't afford to pay £14 for a (normal length) paperback, I just won't. Although if all my books cost that much I'd have to reduce my reading massively. Sadly none of my local libraries offer eBooks.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree that the loss of the midlist is a great shame for the genre and literature in general. I think a genre like SFF needs a space for writers putting out books that are either solid and reliable or quirky and experimental - but almost always good - in order to develop. I doubt that someone like Anne McCaffrey, say, could have had a similar career in writing now, putting out a steady flow of novels liked within the genre but not much known outside it, never becoming "bestseller material" but making a reasonable amount of money doing so.

 

[Vladd67]

I remember reading about the costs of computer games when they were only available from shops. The costs of creating the media, the cost of the packaging, the transport costs, the retailer's price cut etc. All were used as a reason to justify the price of games on the shelf. Then they went all digital ,and the price stayed the same; or even increased.

To a large extent, the price of anything is determined by how much people are willing to pay.

I remember back in the 90s reading an interview with a game publisher, when asked why a game cost £50 he freely admitted it was because they could get away with it.