Monthly Archive for May, 2011

First off, if you haven’t taken advantage of the 99 cent Kindle sale for Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and Sink or Swim, you have a little more time. It will officially end May 30 at 8 p.m. EST. That’s when I’ll change the prices back to $2.99 on Amazon, and then it might take a few hours or several for the new prices to take effect.

Offering an e-book for 99 cents is a controversial subject among authors. Some authors have been experimenting with this price on retail sites such as Amazon, perhaps offering a short-term sale to drum up interest in a book or offering one title for 99 cents over the long term in hopes that readers will pay more for the writer’s other titles. Some authors believe this is a strategy worth doing while others are strongly against it, fearing that it devalues books and that if too many authors charge 99 cents, readers will get used to it. After all, this is our career and how we make money. How can authors support themselves and their families by making a 35 cent royalty per book? (For a 99 cent title, the royalty is 35 cents due to the royalty structure. Kindle books priced over $2.99 can receive a 70 percent royalty.) Another author view is that readers will see 99 cents and assume the book is poorly written because it is so cheap and have that stigma in mind when they read it, which could lead to negative reviews.

I see all these viewpoints. I don’t want my books, or any other books, to be devalued. On the other hand, charging that price for a short while got my books out there and helped me to compete with more well-known authors from larger publishing houses. In April and May, I’ve sold over 3000 Kindle books including 2515 copies of Twenty-Five Years Ago Today as of this writing, 490 copies of my much newer book Sink or Swim, and about 10 of my other titles, plus an additional 32 sales between the U.K. and Germany. And May isn’t even over yet. Just yesterday, I sold well over 100 e-books in 24 hours.

That is amazing sales figures for two months when you figure that some small presses have a print run of 5000. Twenty-Five Years Ago Today
reached a ranking of 285 out of nearly a million books in the Amazon Kindle Store and Sink or Swim got under 1000. That means Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and Sink or Swim are among the most popular Kindle titles in the United States, and paperback sales are increasing also as word of mouth gets out. The books have also made multiple Top 100 lists on Amazon including Historical Mystery, Women Sleuths and Romantic Suspense. Before April and May, I had some successful months where I sold hundreds of copies (a big improvement from my worst month, last October, when I sold about 8!) but until now, I never sold a thousand in one month.

I’m very grateful that many web sites and blogs featured my books during the sale, many of them discovering the titles and highlighting them on their own. Many readers have been reviewing the books and recommending them on Amazon customer forums and other sites. That’s how you know when the marketing buzz is working, when the publicity starts taking on a life of its own. A combination of the 99 cent price tag and a lot of luck made this sale extremely worthwhile for me, but now it’s time to charge $2.99 again so that I can earn a more deserving royalty for all the hard work I’ve put into writing and marketing the novels.

I do have a few other 99 cent titles, though. I’m charging 99 cents for my Kindle picture book titles, The Flag Keeper and Victoria Rose and the Big Bad Noise, as a lot of people still have black and white e-readers. Eventually, I’ll bring The Flag Keeper price up, as there is an awful lot of content in that book for 99 cents, but I’m okay with leaving it there for awhile. After all, there aren’t a lot of children clamoring to use their parents’ e-reader devices, but this all may change. I just heard of a town that wants to buy iPads for their kindergarten students. My picture books are there for when this market takes off. I also have a 99 cent mystery short story on Kindle, titled Laundry Day, which contains sample chapters from Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and Sink or Swim and an author interview. I offer Laundry Day for free on many other sites, including Smashwords, and am hoping Amazon will match that free price so more readers will be introduced to my work.

As far as the 99 cent sale for my novels, the sale got my books out to more than 3000 new readers who will hopefully tell others that the novels exist. As a result, more people should buy the books online and request the titles through their local bookstore or library, boosting both e-book sales and print sales.

Overall, 99 cents got me headed in the right direction, and I’m really thrilled that so many people downloaded the books. But to permanently stay at 99 cents for one of my full-length novels? No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stay at $2.99 and I’ve been hearing other authors talk about having success with $3.99 so raising the price by an extra dollar is something in the back of my mind. The 99 cent sale was one marketing strategy. I have many more coming up, including my Reality Show Rundown Month blog series, visiting two local book clubs and appearing on a mystery author panel, hosting a couple of on-line author chats, a radio interview, and participating in a few summer blog festivals. After that, I have more bookstores to email, more marketing leads to follow, three more books going into production, and a novel to finish writing. The 99 cent sale was one part of a comprehensive marketing campaign, but I’m glad it paid off. Now my goal is to see those sales figures when the Kindle books are at full price and to see those sales figures carry over to the paperback and other e-book editions.

Readers and authors, what are your thoughts about e-book pricing?