Re: length/price questions

On 23/02/2013 17:41, david stein wrote:
>
> [cross-post with Self-Publishing; hope that's okay!]
>
> I wrote a novel that was published in 2002 and has just about sold out its
> first printing of 3,000 copies. I'm trying to get back the print rights so
> I can reissue it myself via POD, but in the meantime, I'd like to publish
> it as an ebook -- and I retained the rights for that. The novel is about a
> quarter-million words and ran almost 600 pages as a $20 trade paperback.
>
> Does it make sense to issue it as a single huge ebook priced at the 
> maximum
> ($9.99) Amazon allows for a 70% "royalty," or would it be better to break
> it into two or even three parts at a lower price each? Given that I'm 
> not a
> brand-name author even in the narrow niche where this falls -- kinky gay
> erotic fiction -- and that $9.99 is quite high for books in this niche,
> though most are far shorter, I'm leaning toward the second option. And 
> if I
> take that route, another possibility is to price the first part very low
> and charge more for the rest. That way folks who don't know if they 
> like my
> writing can try it out with very little risk. But if they get hooked 
> on the
> story and want it all, will they feel exploited by the rising price(s)?
>
> Any advice? Thanks in advance!
>
> David Stein
> publisher, Perfectbound Press
> www.perfectboundpress.com
> Gay BDSM erotica and nonfiction
>

David,

Take this as discussion, and not authoritative; nonetheless from 
considerable monitoring and discussion.

First, I think it is not a good idea to underprice; $10 seems very low 
cost for 250K words.
Second, It seems your niche is a well defined one that is not looking 
for cheap, so much as anything that serves them in that niche.
Third, Kindle lengths seem to be ideally around 30K to 50K below $5 - 
sometimes even above that price.
Fourth, Remember Dickens first sold many of his novels as serialisations 
- how far he had planned the book when he started I don't know, but in 
his case one can sometimes spot the stretching! So it seems to me five 
or six books at $3.99 or $4.99, with the whole ebook on your own site at 
$18 or $20, gives you a chance to gain good revenue.
Five, making the first a lower price could be a good marketing ploy - 
remember to advertise all the others in it, and to advertise the whole 
book on your own website.

AND SIX, please, please, please, do not refer to Kindle contract 
payments as Royalties. Royalties quite specifically refer to publisher 
payments to authors and other rights owners and holders. My 
understanding of the US situation is that Amazon, by calling the 
payments "royalties", gains some administrative tax advantage.

Oh - and don't forget the cliff-hanger in each book to drive readers to 
the next in the series!

Joseph Harris


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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