Books’ Prices and Writing’s Value: Careful What We Asked For?
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | May 20, 2016 |
Image – iStockphoto: mrcmos
Blurring ‘Our Dignity, Our Value’
“The biggest issue is one that will be difficult for us to recover from…the degradation of our worth as creatives.”
That line is from a piece here at Writer Unboxed a year ago, in May 2015. Our colleague Heather Webb, in As Writers, What Are We Worth?, was anticipating a groan heard ’round the world.
Last month, when I led a round-table discussion at Berlin’s Publishers’ Forum, our topic was “Re-Thinking Ebook Sales and Understanding the Consumers.” But what drew the biggest response was book pricing.
“The consumer,” one of our publishers said, “is in perpetual confusion. No way to understand what a single book costs or how to value our authors’ work.” And at the influential publishing house Bastei Lübbe AG, executive board member Klaus Kluge is calling book prices “staggeringly low” in an interview with Sabine Schwiering Tert at Boersenblatt.net.
In the UK in January, Penguin Random House CEO Tom Weldon told my Bookseller colleague Benedicte Page: “”One of the biggest challenges in 2016 will be e-book pricing: how do we maintain the value perception of our quality content and maximize revenues across all formats for both authors and publishers?”
A year later, Webb can see clearly now. Here’s what’s happening on a daily basis to authors’ work in the marketplace:
It's awesome when people brag about how cheaply they got your novel for. NOT. They forget we make our living this way. AKA starvation diet
— Heather Webb (@msheatherwebb) March 19, 2016
When we chat about it, she tells me, “I’ve been noticing this group of readers who troll all the author Facebook pages and websites, Goodreads, etc, for giveaways and they never buy books. They don’t have to. Makes me a little nuts.”
She’s not alone. If we triangulate our German associates’ concern for the “confusion” in the readership about what a book costs today with a nod to London’s PRH chief Weldon’s worry at the highest corporate level with Webb’s lament as she writes, “We can’t lose sight of what’s truly important,” then something bigger than “perma-free” and the per-page-view payouts of Kindle Unlimited comes into view.
Provocations image by Liam Walsh
Everybody’s a Critic. An Author, too.
What have we done to the idea of writing’s value? How fuzzy is this math going to get?
That’s my provocation for you today. How are today’s pricing problems affecting what Webb characterized here last year as “our dignity, our value, and the viability of this industry”?
Books were always commodities of a kind, and buying second-hand romances by the grocery-bagful didn’t start yesterday.
But the Wall of Content, as I call it, is doing more than loom over us. Digital means never having to say you’re out of print. It also means you’re in competition—forever—with everything since Gutenberg. With both the trade and the self-publishing sectors in rampant over-production as they are today, you’re facing a sheer rock face of competition for every glance your book might get, let alone a read, let alone a sale. Your price is in free-fall.
And we can look to our cohorts in Hollywood for a little guidance here, too. You may not remember what the advent of Blockbuster video and then Netflix did to film. But those of us who watched those developments roll in know. Suddenly there were films everywhere, peopled with actors who are not quite the stars they look like speaking dialog that’s as wooden as they are, in strangely unsatisfying knockoffs of other films.
Image – iStockphoto: camelt
We can’t entirely blame independent authors for this gauzy focus on pricing in books. As the indie insurgence began to impact the trade a few years ago, authors who had never been able to get past the agents and editors, the dreaded gatekeepers, found that they could self-publish in our digital age. But self-selling was a different thing.
When you have no marketing department behind you, when you’re not even listed in a publisher’s catalog or recommended to a Barnes & Noble buyer—and no one’s ever heard of you in the world of books—the one way you might turn the head of a potential buyer cruising Amazon is offer a low price. Or no price. “For free” may be a grammatically deplorable phrase (“free of charge” or simply “free” is correct), but for a time, it had a happy ring among consumers who could stuff their e-readers with books by folks they’d never heard of: today a lot of those free slush-files still remain unread on those e-readers, which have been supplanted by tablets.
If the trade was aghast at Amazon’s institution of $9.99 as a viable price for the ebook version of a hardcover hit, it’s tempting to mutter “all is forgiven” now. I know many authors who’d love to get $9.99 for their ebooks. Free downloads by the hundreds might feel exhilarating, but your take-home pay? And while it’s popular to hunker down in the bloggoria and shoot the breeze about the “sweet spot” between $2.99 and $4.99, what frequently is not mentioned is frequency: how many of those things do you have to sell at $3.99—even if you’re getting 70 percent—to put together an income?
Indie/hybrid icon J.A. Konrath, doing a terrific job last week at BookExpo America on a panel about authorship, might have surprised some of the fight-club followers of his blog posts when he said, “If you want to reach the most people possible, you sign with one of these big publishers…. [But] most of us don’t get that invitation to the big show.”
And nobody forced the industry to follow the self-publishing sector in driving the car right on over the cliff. For a time, a UK publisher staged a 20-pence promotion on some of the hottest titles of the year. Now, the bigs are in “new-agency” pricing contracts with Amazon that somehow have them charging high “this price set by the publisher” prices for ebooks at the very moment that the industry needs to energize its digital investments, not price them out of reach.
The Price of Respect
As painful as pricing issues may be in the marketplace and in authors’ efforts to put together a living, the real question, as Webb has suggested, is what happens in the public mind when pricing goes through the floor?
In the readership’s collective mind, the bottom has fallen out. The digital decoupling of price from assumptions of aesthetic and artistic value may, in the long run, prove second only to the Wall of Content, itself, for its impact on publishing’s new context. This has happened in other industries, of course. In news, in music, in freelancing, as many of us discussed in a recent look at the Huffington Post’s use of writers it doesn’t pay.
Webb’s phrase was “degradation of our worth” as creative people. A difficult devaluation is under way. ‘Tis bootless to exclaim, as Marshall McLuhan told us so long ago, “All media work us over completely.” We knew nothing of his genius then. Sadly, we do now.
Far beyond all those craft considerations of how to keep your protagonist dry when it rains, this question of how the world sees literature’s value (in every genre), writers’ value, writing’s value, is about as unfocused and queasy a quandary as you’ll find in publishing.
We’re in a world now that thinks it can write just as well as you can. It doesn’t need your book. It can write its own. It can publish it. And it can lowball it on Amazon, leaving your would-be readers clicking right past your beautiful books.
Say what? You’re asking an outlandish $9.99 for the ebook it took you four years to write and thousands of dollars to produce responsibly?
Who do you think you are?
[coffee title=”Wish you could buy Porter a glass of Campari?” icon=”glass”]Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can![/coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
Well said, Porter. But I’m afraid it’s depressing!! Working on my first piece of fiction and wondering if by the time it is out if I’ll see any return on my artistic investment. Thanks for your insights. Back to work–but must be without a shred of making money. I guess the money must be in teaching and speaking. What do you think?
Hi, Carol!
Apologies for my delayed response during TravelSiege 2016 (otherwise known in the publishing industry as the spring conference and trade show collision).
I get that this is not happy news for authors, believe me, and I’m sorry to have to carry on about it. But I honestly think that the Wall of Content is the most crucially devastating effect of the digital dynamic because the floodgates it has opened can simply drown everything indiscriminately — the very best work along with the very worst. If we had this level of over-production (both in the trade and in the indie movement, I’m not pointing fingers) at the time of, say, Hemingway or Dickinson or even the clever Mr. Dickens, the serialist, would we know those writers today? We might, but it would be a far harder thing for them to have pulled off.
While many are not in love with the industry today, it is because of that industry that we know Steinbeck and Didion and Kingsolver and Hardy. I’m not defending the closed system that publishing became but it’s important to note that the sheer selective control that was in place made it possible for some of the greatest names in literature today to be known, read, and understood as contributing to our culture.
As this mountain of content keeps rising like a new volcano from the sea, an attempt to counter its overkill with low pricing, I fear, is not going to be an effective response. The more publishing, in all its sectors, tells readers that writing is worth next to nothing, the more those readers will expect it for next to nothing — and you don’t turn around those perceptions and expectations.
What it says to you, the (now depressed, sorry!) writer is that every single thing you try to take to market has got to be the very best — the most singular, unusual, definably worthy and distinctive piece of material you can possibly produce. You need, I believe, to think primarily in terms of this kind of special nature of your material. The “me, too!” books that ape other books and mimic whole genre trends just can’t get any traction in this kind of setting.
And yes, any other revenue streams are to be found, nurtured, and preserved. And they need to be independent of your writing. When you say “teaching and speaking,” if you mean doing so relative to your book, I urge you to be careful: If your book doesn’t sell — and the overwhelming majority of books don’t sell — then teaching and speaking gigs are hardly likely to come from that book. Especially in fiction, there’s not a big circuit for authors speaking about their weakly selling titles. (Perhaps you have a social issue or some other handle that figures into your fiction, in which case there may be more reason to think you can speak on it.)
My counsel is that you take your time. Since we don’t “need” your book, why hurry? Let the market continue to try to sort itself in these historically unprecedented conditions while you work. Do something that hasn’t been done before with your writing so that you’re not blending in with the rest of the wall. Try not to avoid the “depressing” nature of these matters. This is reality and far too much author-facing material (the blogs, the author services camp, too many conferences and forums) are geared toward gaily encouraging writers without showing them the reality of what’s out there. I don’t think you need cheerleading. I think you need clarity and honesty, which is why my colleague Jane Friedman and I created The Hot Sheet, for one thing, and why my “provocations” here are rarely a laugh-riot. At a time when too many people are trying to add books to the Wall of Content, what we owe you most is forthright input. There’s no pleasure in sounding like a killjoy, but truth has its own rewards and satisfaction and there’s way too much happy talk for authors today among folks and companies.
And all the best with it.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thanks for taking the time, Porter, to answer all of us with such length. I find encouragement in your answer (although really–aren’t there readers out there who “need” my book?? Ha, ha! A moment of not taking myself too seriously.)
I’ve been working on my first novel for at least 8 years (not counting all the aborted attempts as a picture book/ chapter book that proceeded realizing that my ideas lent themselves to a novel) and am hoping that I’m on the last draft before I get to tweak/edit/sub to beta readers and then to an agent. I think that fits into the “take your time” category. I’ve learned much about novel writing and making it distinctive.
So, maybe I’m on track after all. I’d hate to be added to the humungous Wall of Content out there! But I’ve seen it many times.
Thanks for your thoughts and work.
As this mountain of content keeps rising like a new volcano from the sea, an attempt to counter its overkill with low pricing, I fear, is not going to be an effective response.
The normal effect of a supply increase is a drop in prices. That drop in prices then leads many suppliers to leave the emarket. In the case of books, we can expect the high-cost producers will feel the greatest pressure to exit. It’s likely the large publishers will get out of new fiction for all but a handful of blockbuster authors.
Hi, Terrence.
You know, it’s estimated that Penguin Random House, alone, will produce as many as 15,000 titles in a year from its worldwide operations. I really don’t think the large publishers are likely to get out of new fiction except for blockbusters, myself, although I’m certainly glad to have you share that idea with us.
In fact, one of the most interesting observations from the UK’s Publishers Association’s new report (its annual Statistics Yearbook) turns out to be that the trade in the United Kingdom was actually a bit larger in 2015 than it was in 2011. It appears that the industry establishment is generally, slowly growing.
I think that news of a healthy trade is as encouraging as news of a healthy independent movement. In both settings, selectivity of material and good marketing of content produced can mean better work and less undiscerning piling-on to the Wall of Content.
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I doubt they will have much of a choice. Consumers will move to the lower priced goods that satisfy theor needs. Unless the publishers can move into the $3 area, or mimic Kindle Unlimited, market share will dictate the move.
It’s a lot easier if we just think of books as toasters or widgets. Prices fall, and everybody realigns their business. The conglomerates that own the big publishers have been shuffling assets and business lines for a long time. It’s not going to stop.
It may take a while, but i suspect the publishers’ objective is to exit most fiction with as much cash as possible and a healthy balance sheet.
Fabulous Porter. This is an issue we need regular reporting on, and I hope the ones who do it are as wide-reaching and level-headed as you’ve been.
I think the biggest single problem is the insanely high big-pub e-book prices, which kill the market for the rest of us in a non-intuitive but very effective way. They get to subsidize their paper books AND throw the indies on the trash heap at the same time, because people believe if it’s cheap it can’t be any good. The lower we drop our prices the more we confirm the “tsunami of crap” argument. And who’s going to plunk down $10 for a big-pub bestselling author and then go public that it was a waste of money? Some, not nearly enough.
Frustrating.
We also have to price in fame to the equation. I think a lot of authors, including me, would trade some of our writing income for being well known and well liked. What else, in the end, does trad-pub give you, but placement in front of people’s eyes and some buzz?
Unfortunately, Will, from what I’ve seen, much of the cheap stuff leaves a lot to be desired. It may as well say “Made in China.” As Porter stated, “We’re in a world now that thinks it can write just as well as you can. It doesn’t need your book. It can write its own. It can publish it. And it can lowball it on Amazon.”
I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve asked me to read their work for “my thoughts” (like, who am I?) and, even after a fair critique with suggestions that they may want to strengthen it here, do this, that, and the other, then pass it by a professional editor, they’ve still turned around and self-pubbed without any additional effort. And they’ve flooded the market. They’re everywhere (except here at Writer Unboxed, of course! :) ). And they’re giving it away or selling it cheap.
So there’s an influx of this Made in China crap. How do you battle that with your good ol’ Made in Murca novel that actually has merit?
For me, when the time comes (like I said, who am I? Just another unpubbed newbie), I plan to stand steadfastly behind my work, market the hell out of it the best I can, and not waiver on pricing, except for limited sales, just like a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans. Then begin another book.
But it’s disheartening when I hear other writers, as I did recently in a comment on this site, say, “I wouldn’t pay $15 for a novel. [James Patterson’s] or anybody else’s.”
Goodness! It’s pretty telling when James Patterson can’t even garner more than a tenner.
Great article, Porter! I’ll be following this subject closely.
Mike–
I like what you say here, and agree with it. When you anticipate your future as a writer in relation to pricing, you say you will “stand steadfastly behind my work and market the hell out of it….”
This leads me to correct my own comment. I said the term gatekeeper should be replaced with turnkey. I was wrong. The correct term should be “toll collector.” That’s because the toll now being charged to writers by the publishing biz is a mastery of self-promotion, creation of a platform, etc. Recently, a successful debut writer described creating her platform before she’d written a word of her novel. Can this be a good thing? Does it contribute to what you describe as “made in China” books that succeed? Almost certainly.
Hey, Barry,
Yes! Toll collector is a great term. :)
Let me clarify my “Made in China” description, though. When I said MiC, I was referring to the barrage of penny-ante books, both in price and quality, that have been released since the advent and ease of e-publishing. There are indeed many terrific books (self-pubbed and trad) that are being sold for next-to-nothing just because of the flooded market, but those are not the ones I meant.
Much like your friend, I’ve spent the last couple of years building a platform while I learn more about the biz (actually, a learn-as-I-go type thing), and it wasn’t until recently that I’ve been actively working on my debut novel again (I had a lull shortly after starting). By the time all is said and done, I hope to have enough name recognition to garner interest in my book, then commence with the “helluva lotta marketing” plan I have, regardless of my route to publication.
As Don said to JSB below, build a better brick and they will beat your door down (or something like that…I didn’t scroll down to look again). That’s the important thing to remember in all of this pricing talk…one still has to have a good brick to sell, whether it’s 99¢ or $9.99.
Here’s to a heavy demand for brick houses. Cheers!
Mike, thanks for this, and apologies for my late reply.
I agree with you, hearing another (self-styled, I assume) writer say they wouldn’t pay $15 for a book is very telling.
I know authors whose work I’d pay a lot more than $15 to own (in print) or license (in digital). Much more than $15. I’m proud to have paid far more than that, many times, for works I wanted.
What a person identifying as a writer and saying that kind of thing demonstrates is twofold: (a) There’s a large contingent of operatives in the field right now who have no background in the art or business of books — they might be just as happy in Tupperware or lawn mower sales. And (b) the distance someone talking that way seems to stand from any sense of literature or art or cultural ethos is probably too vast to close.
To suggest that no author’s work is worth more than $15 is to throw out Chaucer, Shakespeare, and DeLillo with the bathwater of digitally empowered opportunism.
And eventually what we have to concede is that the industry itself stands for little today. Under such infinitely fractured gazes, these differences won’t be reconciled. We need to come to terms with that, and it’s not easy.
Optimists can always be counted on at this point to say, “Well, at least we all love books.” But I’m not sure that’s true. I think that many entering the field today, wide-eyed and clueless, know nothing of books and don’t feel they need to. And they’re adding to the Wall of Content.
Where this leaves us is daunting, but looking at it calmly and without agenda is the important thing. It’s the lay of our upended land now. We’ll hear much worse than that sad $15 crack while traversing it, too.
Thanks, as ever,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Since I am the person who stated I would not pay $15 for fiction I have to say you’re overshooting the mark. It’s not mine or anyone else’s sense of art. It’s economic reality.
There are many people who will pay $200 or more for a music concert or some sports venue (and probably hundreds more). I do not. I cannot. I’m sorry if my lower income offends anyone’s sense of art (or worse, causes them to make presumptions about my taste in art), but it is also short-sighted to assume every reader is just walking around with wads of money. Not realistic. Some of us are simply trying to survive like the ‘starving artist’.
Hi, Brenda,
No worries, you make a perfectly good accounting of your rationale about what you spend on books, and in that context, your feeling is perfectly understandable. As you know, it wasn’t presented that way, and so it was impossible to tell that the original comment had been made as a reference to limited funds.
In fact, there are writers who are not so constrained by finances but simply think that such prices as $15 are too high. And, all things being equal (setting aside individual budgetary concerns), that’s a difficult position to support, in that writers need each other’s encouragement, I believe, to try to stand up for their work in the marketplace with the best prices they can bring themselves to charge.
I’m most impressed these days with authors (some are on this comments-a-thon) who decline to lower their prices to meet the usual expectations of the day and stand by their books as the worthy projects they believe them to be. That takes guts.
But, again, no slight was intended toward you for financial circumstances (we all have them in one way or another) and until you spoke up, no one even knew you were the original maker of the comment.
Thanks for the gracious explanation, and all the best with your work,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
While we’re talking about the actual price/value of a book, let me look wa-a-ay back in time when Pocket Books first came out with a price of 25 cents. At that time you paid 5 cents for an apple, one fifth the cost of a paperback.
Yesterday I bought an apple for $1.22. Let’s call it $1.25 = one twelfth the cost of a paperback at $15.
It’s all relative.
Today (I’m in Canada) the $15 paperback from Amazon seems a thing of the past: more likely $18 to $22 since the turn of the year.
I’m not complaining, either as an author or a buyer. We get what we pay for
And a good reminder, Lyn, about comparing apples to paperbacks. :)
Thanks for the input. Sounds to me like the price you’re seeing in Canada is the same is in the States. (US$15 right now is about CAN$19).
Appreciate your input, thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I agree with you, hearing another (self-styled, I assume) writer say they wouldn’t pay $15 for a book is very telling.
It is telling. It tells us the competition is satisfying the consumer at lower prices.
Price represents what one can exchange a book for. Value represents what one can do with a book. Consumers look for the highest value for the lowest price. If they get the same satisfaction from a $15 book as they get from a $2.99 book, they buy the $2.99 book.
Thanks again, Terrence.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi, Will,
I’m so late getting back to you (mad travel season) that I’m under a Wall of Comment here, LOL, but in thanking you for your input, I just want to say that I’m not at all sure that “insanely high big-pub ebook prices” are as much a problem as you think. They’re losing market share to much more cheaply priced content (as well as to competitive media), and the gradually evolving assertion of the “empowered” reading public is that books should cost less.
Many industry observers think that the majors are losing ebook share because of their higher prices, and Mike Shatzkin has written up a remarkably compelling theory that it’s Amazon that wanted a return to agency pricing in the new contracts, not the Big Five. You can read Mike’s commentary here — https://bit.ly/21FFW4M — some of the most remarkable of the year.
The kernal of what he writes: “It turns out that the real story of “agency pricing today” is that Amazon demonstrated dazzling marketplace power by keeping all the big publishers on agency terms. And all of the changes in the marketplace, including the degree by which the divison sales within Big Five houses between print and digital may have tilted in favor of print, probably work in Amazon’s favor.”
I’m afraid it’s too simplistic to say that major publishers’ pricing is the problem in the devaluation of writers and literature in the world today. The entire industry has basically caved. The readers now think a book should be cheap. And looking for someone to blame isn’t nearly as important as looking for what to do to communicate to the audiences we need.
We need readership, new readership.
And we need to stop publishing so much.
Thanks again for your comment!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
As always, Porter, you’ve highlighted an issue all writers, and other creatives, face. Devaluation hurts everyone, and in the bid to be price competitive and discoverable, writers are struggling more than ever to make their mark. I guess the question remains, what CAN a writer do to manoeuvre the rapids?
I would hope that writers and publishers will begin working in tandem to educate the reading public about the perceived value of our work. Will they though, and if they do, how will readers react?
Hey, Debbie,
Thanks for your kind comment and I of course join you in that hope of seeing author and publishers work together to communicate to the public what high-value effort the industry produces.
As I’ve said in may other discussions about the Wall of Content, one of our biggest problems is that the industry, as yet, has not understood itself to be the main stakeholder who (in the aggregate) should be trying to build new readership. The business’ continued willingness to let men and boys walk away from reading with out a fight, for example, is baffling to me. Why leave half the world’s money (“male money”) on the table? But so completely accepting is the industry of the idea that women — three cheers for them! — are vastly out-buying and out-reading the guys, that it doesn’t even seem to have the gumption to go after the guys. Amazing, really.
At the foot of the Wall of Content, what we know is that we have two choices:
We either find new readers or we publish fewer books.
There simply isn’t a third alternative that makes any sense. And I, for one, would rather see us grow the readership.
I’ve mentioned at Writer Unboxed in the past my “10 for one” plan. If you publish a book, you bring the industry 10 new readers — people who were not in the habit of reading. In other words, earn your keep not only by writing but also by helping to swell the consumer base for everyone.
You can imagine the quick agreement I got from everyone to that suggestion, LOL.
But seriously, we simply have got to start admitting that we’re flooding our own market. And unless somebody wants to stop publishing books, we need a lot more readers, quickly.
Many thanks, and all the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
You bring to light a serious issue regarding male readership, and one I hadn’t really thought of before. I’m thinking of the majority of males in my own family, and few of them read regularly. Why is that? It isn’t that they are illiterate oafs. Again, it seems to me to be a matter of perceived value. Reading isn’t perceived as having as high a social or economic value as other “manly” pursuits, therefore many males don’t believe it is worth their time or money. So again, education is the key. When we as a society place a high value on recreational reading (and other creative engagements) beyond the toddler years, then perhaps we will see parents and teachers actively encouraging young males to read for pleasure. Does this mean the second part of the equation then becomes ensuring we have enough male focused reading material available to interest them? Do we need more writers who target this demographic at a variety of age levels in order to nurture more male readers and writers? What part in the educational system do the publishers play in aggressively promoting certain genres to target consumers? Great food for thought along with my morning coffee.
Hear, hear!!
Hi, Debbie,
Here’s a piece I wrote here at WU recently about the gender divide in the readership. https://bit.ly/1TvO8o1
It turns out to be a very hard thing to discuss. Many people feel that if you want to promote male reading (as I do, and as I think the industry should do), then you must be anti-women. Which simply isn’t the case for me. But this is why it’s so hard to mention that the industry is 78% female (according to Lee and Lowe’s study) and in the UK 80% female. I think the women of publishing are fantastic. But, as you might imagine, there is great sensitivity around any effort to look at these figures.
If the situation were reversed and 78% of our industry were male, I think it would be considered quite right to point out that all those guys wouldn’t likely be producing all the best material to bring girls and women to reading. But when you try to suggest that all these good women may not be able to produce all the best material to bring boys and men to reading, there’s little patience for that observation.
In short, finding a cordial, productive way to discuss the gender elements in publishing is hard for everyone.
All that being said, I maintain a that the industry is missing both a commercial opportunity and an issue in cultural ethics by seemingly being satisfied to have such a marvelous, faithful readership among women while letting guys and men off the hook.
I hope to be able to find ways in the future to speak and write about this without touching off so much defensiveness all around. It’s an issue we need to tackle but we tend to get mired in the gender-debate weeds before we even get to the real matters at hands.
Thanks again for all your good input.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well done, Porter. I’ve been in the endless indie loop for a couple years now. You give away lots of books, get a few who actually read the book, even fewer leaving reviews. Far fewer buying more of your books.
Thank God I have my engineering day job that I actually enjoy.
However, as a free-market guy, I have to say that this could have all been predicted and there’s really nothing anyone can do about it. It’s the same game we’ve always played: write, write well, and pray for a bit of luck. Whether luck comes in the form of a publisher’s offer or decent sales as an indie makes little difference.
To be honest, though, I’d love to see the publishers come around with a formula for getting quality books at the forefront of sales. So far they seem to be chasing the indie wave and trying not to drown.
I do know that most of the indie books I download are not worth reading past chapter 1. There are some great indie authors out there, but most aren’t ready.
Publishers do need to stop pretending that ebooks are a fad. Every day I see reports about the rebounding print market and flat ebook sales. Really? Suddenly entire populations have had it with technology and wish to move backwards? Soon they’ll be returning to the playhouse in droves as well, leaving their televisions in the trash heap.
Once the publishers accept reality and begin fighting back with quality and lower pricing (not free or $2.99, but certainly not $15 for an ebook), they’ll find their groove.
Thanks for the post.
Hi there, Ron,
Apologies for the long delay here, and thanks for your good comment.
As you can tell from my piece, I agree with you that publishers in some instances have tended to follow the pricing patterns of the independent sector, and I do think that this has helped contribute to the general (and gradual) diminution of writing’s value in the minds of the reading public.
I think we want to be careful, however, to remember that self-publishing authors are in a tough situation. If your experience is that most indie material is sub-standard, then a lot of other capable independent authors are going to be considered below par, too . Even when you’ve had disappointing results, as you have, it’s important to try to give more indie work a chance, if you feel like you can do so.
As far as hopes go for some publishers that print is in “resurgence,” you might find this story interesting relative to the newly released Publishers Association Statistics Yearbook. https://bit.ly/1VhgaTr Reactions are cheery even when the actual data gathered by the project shows only quite slim overall advances in print and a (terribly hopeful) indication that both print and digital can co-succeed. One really doesn’t have to defeat the other.
Thanks again, Ron, always good to have you with us,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter-
Troubling.
Reminds me of an old car sales joke: “We’ve slashed prices so low we lose money on every sale – but we make it up with volume!”
Thanks.
Ha!
I love that line, Tom. You’re sure that was cars, not books, right? :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I find myself in a quandary about this as a reader and a writer. I do not agree that because a book is high priced it must therefore be high quality. I simply think it is overpriced. I have purchased VERY few traditionally published books for that reason.
On the other hand, it feels like too many people give their books away for free too much. But that’s easy for me to say–I’m not trying to market their books and swim with a huge ocean of fish.
But there has to be a way for a writer to make a decent living without gouging the reader. But I for one don’t associate free or low-priced with low quality. That may be the overall perception, but it does not apply to me.
A writer can make a decent living. A million writers can’t. Consumers don’t want all those books at prices necessary to support all those writers.
Correct.
Hi, BK,
I didn’t actually equate higher prices with higher quality, myself.
My bottom line, pardon the pun, is that I think a writer deserves more than 70% or 30% of @2.99 or $1.99 for going through what it takes to write a book. I think publishers deserve good compensation for their work in bringing that book to market, and I think that all the people who work on getting a book properly into place deserve decent payment.
I can’t see these rock-bottom prices supporting anything but a kind of flea market effect in terms of how our consumer-readers assess the value of literature.
I have paid high prices for books I didn’t find good, we all have.
That doesn’t mean that the basic value of books isn’t monetarily rightfully higher than the very low prices at which we see them moving today. This is all I’m saying. I’m not trying to equate quality or lack of it to one end of the pricing spectrum or another.
Thanks for reading.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Does “you get what you pay for” still apply in our world? I’m thinking maybe. Somewhere. But then I’ve been accused of being a Pollyanna. Anyway, my head is spinning after reading your post, so I figure there’s only one thing for me to do, which is to get back to work on my novel. And thank you, Porter, for laying it all out here. I am duly provoked!
Good for you for getting back to work, Susan! :)
Actually, there isn’t necessarily a connection between very low prices and lesser work. Once the entire framework has tilted to the deep discounts, then content, both trade and indie, may be found in these very low ranges, some of it good and most of it awful. And when the trade participates in bargain-basement pricing, particularly in resistance to independent sector pricing, then we have to lay that at the feet of the traditional industry, they have capitulated in their own marketing and pricing to a trend that ends up devaluing the very work they produce.
It’s another way that the obfuscation of widespread down-pricing creates that “confused” consumer base that Kluge and others are discussing in Europe and in other parts of the world.
Certainly on the industry level, I’d say that we’re getting what we pay for when we allow the valuation of this or any art to be so completely shattered. It was pretty cheap to trash, too. It’s going to be a lot more expensive to build back some sense of value inherent in the work of writers, I’m afraid. All content is under this pressure; we have to decide how much we’re willing to exacerbate that.
Thanks for being duly provoked! :)
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Amen, Porter! I don’t know of any other artistic genre that gives their work away (yes I know there’s an issue of supply and demand). Last week I talked to a publisher who told she prices her ebooks at $.99 and paperbacks at $19.95 and they sell because readers assume at that price they’re buying a good read. And she says she’s making money. My current publisher just went under and they kept their prices no more than 3.99 for e format and 16.95 for paperback meanwhile encouraging authors to run free or .99 promotions continually.
Hi, Judith,
It’s a shame about your publisher who has gone under, sorry to hear that!
Thanks for your input. It’s a very tricky time because the pressure to price low is immense and yet that may be one of the worst things that publishers and authors can do. I’ve just spoken with one publishing services exec (for independent publishing houses) who says that he thinks the drive down to free is over and we’re starting to experiment with some higher pricing overall. Hope he’s right!
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Way back before the internet, those bags of second-hand books had been bought firsthand by SOMEBODY. The author got paid at least once for every copy sold.
On the other hand, I sell more Kindle copies than print, and I do see my 70% royalties every month. Enough to buy the dogfood.
I think the bottom line here is that any writer who wants to keep on writing ought not to give up his day job.
Many (many) years ago when my first novel got picked up by Doubleday, I saw the writing on the wall. Went back to school and got a profession to support my writing habit. I may not have become a famous author, but I’ve had a satisfying professional life, and have never stopped writing.
Just – my life doesn’t depend on it.
So what’s new?
The internet is new. I think that is the sum total of the bottom line of our new world. Anyone can find anything if he puts in the time to search for it.
And since when has the writer not occupied the very bottom position of the publishing totem pole?
Hmm?
Hi, Lyn,
I hear what you’re saying, and thanks for it. I’m not satisfied, though, with thinking that writers have to “occupy the very bottom position of the publishing totem pole” forever just because at many points in the past (not always and not all writers) that was the case.
I’m hoping that we start developing and nurturing some ways that genuinely talented and skilled writers can stand out from the Wall of Content and be well-supported. Day jobs are not to be abandoned, no, but we can do a hell of a lot better than 99 cents for years of creative effort on somebody’s part. We don’t know how yet, but I think there will be a kind of shakedown even in the independent camp on this.
Another keen observer tells me that readers are no longer as easily wooed by low pricing because they’re finding that the quality is as low as the price far too frequently. That’s good news, really, if it means a more discerning, supportive marketplace for better work.
Thanks again, really appreciate you reading and commenting,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thank you for this much needed post. There are two things that concern me on this issue.
When books are priced below what they’re worth, book buyers come to expect the low prices and balk at paying more. Don’t those same people expect to get paid when *they* work?
Yet, to defend our dear readers — do we want them paying a fair price for our book only to find, three days later, that they could have bought it for half that? As a self-published author, I am not happy with the games Amazon plays with prices. For that reason, I chose not to participate in Kindle Select. Yet I had no control when Amazon decided to offer my paperback for less than the established price. And it seems I’d have even less control over the price if my book were in the hands of a publisher.
How can we expect the world to respect our work if we don’t make sure we do that ourselves?
Is insulin priced below what it is worth? A diabetic needs it to stay alive.
Note all the advocates of lowering the prices of life-saving drugs. Is that a comment on their worth?
Hi, Carmel,
I think you speak very well to the frustrations of parts of the market experience for many writers. You’re correct that both the Amazonian system and a publisher’s management of your pricing aren’t within the level of control you or another writer might like. It’s interesting to hear you say that because many self-publishers like to talk about how much control they do have over pricing and various other factors of how their work is presented for sale.
It is the case, though, that Amazon’s interests are not always the same as an author’s interests or another vendor’s interests. Some writers have had trouble coming to terms with that, having originally seen Seattle as a kind of avuncular helper to their aspirations. And the flip side of that is that without the leverage of Amazon’s digital development, most of our self-publishing corps would have little if anything on the market. Amazon and its Kindle system in 2007 led the development of digital publishing into the viability it enjoys today. None of which is meant to make you feel better, but is simply to say that as irritating as various elements of the marketplace may be (and voting with your feet by staying out of KU is a perfectly appropriate choice), it is a marketplace that largely didn’t exist 10 or 12 years ago and we all at times probably expect more of it than is reasonable.
What seems not to have changed is the importance of platform ownership. He or she who owns the platform, whether that’s an online operation like Amazon or a traditionalist publishing house, is still the intermediary between author and reader. Direct sales to readers are almost impossible for a single writer to scale, which is where the value of an Amazon or Kobo or iBooks comes in.
Things will continue to evolve and perhaps toward more actual control for authors (the Aer.io system as a part of Ingram is an exciting potential boon). But to date, “total control” in the marketplace is as much a myth for writers as it is for most other vendors.
As in any business, constraints on trade exist. That doesn’t excuse reality but it pretty much recognizes that what many of our newer independent writers think of as a serious hobby is operated in the professional world as a business. Trying to make that business support the readership’s understanding of the value of good literature is, as it turns out, no walk through the park.
Thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I see two lines of thought here, Porter (on one cup of joe, that’s about as far as I can see at the moment). One is about an author trying to get noticed. The other is about how pricing affects the perception of quality.
As to the first, I don’t know that the landscape is exactly as you’ve described it.
Digital means never having to say you’re out of print. It also means you’re in competition—forever—with everything since Gutenberg.
I see it a bit differently. As I argue in my Kill Zone piece last Sunday, the “discoverability problem” is based on a faulty premise, viz, that it’s all about ONE BOOK at a time trying to get attention in the vast and expanding sea of content. But that’s not how writers make careers or readers/browsers find books. The former build up their own readership via what I’m calling “trustability.” This is how thousands of indie authors make good, and some grand, income today. And note: there is a “quality” requirement here. The author must be able to deliver the goods, not just keep adding to the content. Thus, there is not a “degradation” inherent in the system. One can argue about overall market “quality” but would then we’d have to open the old debate about art v. commerce. (I will just say that before one places all one’s chips on art, go ask all those painters on Parisian sidewalks how easy it is to make a living at it. Heck, ask all those “literary” authors of the 20th Century, most of whom had to teach and write on the side to put steak on the table. It’s never been easy. E.g., Faulkner and Fitzgerald had to take Hollywood gigs, which they loathed, to have enough for a roof and booze.
As to readers, our potential readers, do not wake up each day only to fall again, ut fata trahunt, into the roiling sea of everything. Most of the time they get something recommended to them, via friend, review, algorithm. IOW, if I may channel my inner Floyd, we authors are not just another brick in the wall. We are in the brick business, which requires learning how to make bricks people want to buy, and then producing them. Build a better brick, and the world will beat a path to your door sort of thing.
As to pricing, readers have always made decisions that way without thinking in terms of degradation. They think in terms of a matrix made up of what they like to read (which may b fixed or variable) what they perceive from others (e.g., reviews) and (always) how they can spend as little as possible in order to get what they desire.
In the 50s, a schoolteacher might want to read Mickey Spillane (50¢) to relax. His wife might have been a member of the BOMC to get middlebrow books (e.g., Sloan Wilson, Herman Wouk) at the best price.
But we’re in a world now that thinks it can write just as well as you can. It doesn’t need your book.
It never has. Nor does the world owe writers a living. But a writer who knows how to please readers can build a base and market directly to it. The successful author, even of the past, looks long-term and over the course of many books. There is still a rough merit system, too, as there always is in a free market.
I’ve got to go pour another jolt! Thanks for waking me from my dogmatic slumbers, Porter.
“Nor does the world owe writers a living. But a writer who knows how to please readers can build a base and market directly to it. The successful author, even of the past, looks long-term and over the course of many books. There is still a rough merit system, too, as there always is in a free market.”
Yes, This.
Jim, I really like what you said about giving the readers what they want too. I don’t write for everybody … my readers are kids. And they are the most honest readers out there. Of course, I also have to please parents and teachers but that’s a whole another can of worms.
Porter, I love a good deal just as anybody else but I’m not averse to spending a lot of money on books I will read and re-read and grow old with. My husband and I joke that we’re the kind of people who’d be happy with dal-bhat (the Indian staple of rice and lentils) just so we could read great books. I have a lot of these in my home. I’m never going to starve.
I’m immediately hungry for dal-bhat, myself, Vijaya, and am so glad that we’re both so well-stocked with great books!
Thanks, as ever,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thoughtful analysis, Jim, and right on:
“Build a better brick, and the world will beat a path to your door sort of thing. ”
That sort of thing. When consumers pay $9.99 for an e-book, it’s not because publishers have held the line on price–as we can see from how often they use promotional pricing–but because the author has somehow gained that trust.
$9.99 may suggest a great read, but that’s not automatic any more than $.99 means a poor read. Consumers are no so easily swayed by the one factor of pricing. They rely on additional cues, first and foremost of which is whether they are already fans of a given author.
So make fans. Keep on rewarding them with each new title. How? Plenty of advice on brick manufacturing here at WU.
Now, in my part of the world, Don and Jim, it’s “Build a better brick s-t house…” but I won’t quibble, Sybil.
By coincidence, Don, I was interviewing an industry figure today who said that he thinks that readers ARE starting to respond to pricing in a way that indicates they shy away from a 99-cents book and feel like they have a better chance of a good read with something that costs more.
Not necessarily $9.99 or any other price in particular — but he says he’s seeing a kind of “anything but 99 cents” response to a market in which readers have been repeatedly burned in paying 99 cents and getting not a good book but a brick.
Technically, no, there’s not a thing that says a good book can’t be bargain-basement priced. I’ll bet that every one of us still has something on the shelf bought when still a student (this was very recently for me, of course) and cherished not just for its excellence — Camus in my case — but for the fact that we bought it off some stall-keeper on the Left Bank for a single franc because they still had francs then.
But my point has more to do with what passes through the minds or Campari vapors of many of us when we see something priced at 99 cents.
Speaking only for myself, if I see a writer offering his or her work at that rate, I’m worried that said writer doesn’t have a lot of conviction about her or his material.
I know several writers who have found a modicum of satisfaction in holding onto higher prices for themselves — in the $7.99 to $9.99 range for ebook editions — because in a flotilla of perma-free material they knew they’d staked a claim to a symbol, just a symbol, of self-respect. I like that. I appreciate their courage, frankly. They know they’re probably giving up a few cheap sales and they’re willing to suffer that consequence in order to honor their own intents with the small dignity of a better price. I don’t think such authors are to be castigated. I appreciate their belief in themselves.
The $9.99 price, by the way, is entirely arbitrary. Set by Seattle as a good price for a Kindle edition of something — back when we were all younger and Mr. Bezos needed to get the Kindle’s walled garden well-seeded — that price nevertheless, I think, has a ring of authenticity about it. If we go way back to the days of “Well, the ebook has no paper, warehousing, or trucking costs” (remember those debates?), there was a kind of gratifying nobility in finding that the $23.00 hardback might be $9.99 in digital. Just enough of a price to have to think about it but also carrying a generous nod to the nature of the format. One felt that the author hadn’t been stiffed. One also felt that one had been asked to monetarily recognize something of the author’s (and publisher’s and agent’s and designer’s and editor’s) efforts.
At 99 cents? Well.
Once I’ve finished that special brick structure in the backyard, you won’t find me offering it at 99 cents. I shall starve with self-respect. And you can laugh at me all the way to Filene’s.
The beagle says hi,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Great response. Build better bricks. On it!
I like this line, Jim:
“The author must be able to deliver the goods, not just keep adding to the content.”
I believe we are in Compleat Agreement.
Yours in caffeine,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
What a dilemma! As you mentioned, Porter, the devaluation of authors has come from the fact that there are too many books out there, many of which are free and discounted heavily.
I also think that Amazon’s business strategy is part of the problem. As a self-published author, I’ve appreciated the ease of getting my book published through CreateSpace and the marketing possibilities through Amazon’s author page, etc. But because of this ease, there is a lot of crap out there.
As well, Amazon has encouraged authors to give their books away or lower their prices through Kindle Countdown as it brings consumers to their website. These discounted books are like the loss leaders in grocery stores. You get the buyer in and they’ll buy something else they hadn’t expected to buy. I don’t think authors realize that they are pawns at times, despite getting the opportunity to wear the kingly robes of authorship.
Hi, Diana,
Thanks for your input here.
It has definitely been hard for many writers to understand that Amazon has its own commercial requirements in place, and that those may not be at times fully beneficial to authors.
Each vendor, whether in self-written books or in professionally manufactured lawn mowers, learns that he or she is trading in a marketplace owned by someone else, and the needs of that marketplace come first. While I’m sure it can feel like the experience of being a pawn, this is a Kasbah, and the energies of commerce it’s built to support are geared to use all comers in one way or another as lures to others. I think you’re capturing that reality very well, Diana.
Over time, it’s those like you who discern and understand these dynamics who will fare best in what still is an evolving marketplace. Amazon delivered a couple of things to me this week with free same-day service. The remarkable nature of that kind of “last mile” distribution is where authors might actually want to start thinking about Amazon. Understanding and learning to sense the needs of the platform itself can be a huge help in handling the power of this new form of customer outreach — rather than feeling crushed or neglected by it.
As I try to remind folks (with nothing but respect for the very real problems they encounter) humankind has never seen a sales vehicle of the breadth and power of Amazon. Many things about it are and will be uncomfortable. But even with commercial intent, this is the creation of the most extensive library in history.
And in time, I think the most successful writers will ride this power like surfers, such tiny creatures on such vast waves, but deft and clever at leveraging deep strength to their advantage.
All the best with the exploration of where you stand in this world of sales and how best to “ride” its forces, Diana!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
What a lovely reply! I agree, authors will have to learn how to ride the waves.
Ever optimistic, I find the challenge interesting and one I plan to take on, despite the fact that some marketing avenues are closed to indie writers like myself. After all, I want to keep writing, write well, and get my work read by as many as possible.
Right, exactly, Diana,
And the more cooperative, even collaborative, a spirit you can keep about you as you go forward, the likelier you are, I think, to succeed.
This is one area in which our booksellers, the shops and stores, have had so much trouble, I’m afraid. Instead of understanding the overwhelming power of the Amazonian advent and looking for ways to work with it, so many of them have tried to somehow stand apart from it, shun it, criticize it…fear it. This curtails their chances to work with the largest power in books ever created and that, I think, is a loss for all of us.
A great deal is squandered in the grip of emotion and our industry has been particularly prey to this problem. The more “het up,” to say it colloquially, you find a player discussing this, the likelier you are to find no progress, just anger.
Later in this string of comments, the discussion veers into the familiar wasteland of indie-vs.-trade arguments (which were not the point of my article, of course) and you find that many respondents in that area are doing what I’m starting to call “exchanging anger tokens.” They call up an irritant, knowing that it will work like laying down an aggravating card or game token on the table. Others will snap it up to add to their own little caches of anger tokens. For them, Being Angry has become far more important that the facts of any of these situations, and they are the noisy, endlessly hostile, sad people who find a kind of haven in the world of independent publishing.
Ultimately, there’s nothing to say to them. They don’t want to hear a kind or helpful word, and they don’t want a fix. They want to be angry. We must wish them well and move on.
(It’s as a counter to this, in fact, that Jane Friedman and I have developed The Hot Sheet, our slogan being “no drama, no hype,” so we can deliver agenda-less, emotion-less analysis of industry issues to authors.)
Your attitude of game, upbeat, determined effort on your own work’s behalf is terrific. Never give that up. The platforms do need content and those who can succeed in their marketplaces will have that clever ear for cooperative agility you’re developing.
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
You are so right. “A great deal has been squandered in the grip of emotion…” Negative emotions sap our energy and take us to unproductive places. Thanks again for your support, Porter.
Porter, I agree with you completely. However, I feel like there is one thing that you may have missed. With the new tech world the way that it is, there are even more avenues than before. For instance, you can download the overdrive media app on your phone, get a bogus online library card, and have full access to anything you want to read for free. You can even download audio books and listen to them on your ride into work with your blue tooth car system. This day and age, everyone is looking for the freebie and there are endless different ways to get it. No one cares about the starving artist who they “love to read” but won’t support by actually purchasing their work. In short… don’t quit your day job writers.
So borrowing books from the library is now a great evil? C’mon. Don’t forget if the library patrons reading books at the library (ebook or otherwise) are thrilled with your work, they’re going to pass the word.
David, library sales are significant. And there are many, many readers who cannot afford to buy books. Libraries are the great equalizer. I love and support them.
In fact, one way to support an author is to recommend to your local librarian to purchase the book.
I believe you may have missed my point. Libraries in themselves are not evil and are great for people who cannot afford to buy books. In specific, I was speaking about the methods of such apps like Overdrive Media. You can basically claim you live in any certain area without any proof so you can have access to their entire collection for free. You can also have multiple library cards from multiple places. By doing this, if the title you would like to read isn’t at a particular library, no sweat, just go on to the next one and the next one until you find it for free. People who obtain a library card from their local library, where they pay their taxes for such amenities, is completely viable and should be taken advantage of.
If my local library does not have a book that I want to read, they request a copy from a library that does have the book. The other library sends the book to my library and I check it out. I have to wait longer to get the book, but the system works. I don’t get multiple library cards from places where I do not live.
One error: Libraries are not for people who cannot afford books. Libraries are for everyone who has legitimate access to the library system. Our taxes go to pay for libraries and their book purchases, so we’ve PAID in some way to read books. I haven’t used the libary in decades–I have always preferred to buy books–but I want to downsize. That means I may not want to buy many books anymore. And the truth is, I have 2000 books, both print and ebooks, that I own and have not yet read (due to hoarding, basically). I have a whole apartment dedicated to my books. But we don’t have the luxury income thanks to the Great Recession we once did that allowed me to spend 5K a year on books. I spend less then 500 annually these days.
Plus so many classic works are free online. The Internet is great for reading classics of all sorts –theology, fiction, non-fiction, poetry-for ZIP cost.
It’s time to accept the new reality. Books are a commodity and the quantity available (and ease of availability) has increased. Writers write what they want–without someone agreeing to pay for it upfront–so it’s always a risk to write. You assume someone wants your imaginative work. Maybe NOBODY wants it. Maybe a dozen people want it. But again, it’s no guarantee what you created has a market or an audience.
When you write to create, you may really only be writing for yourself. No one has promised to give you squat for it.
Why writers assume that their work deserves pay–it’s work you decided to do, not that someone contracted you to do in a lot of cases with fiction–I don’t understand. It’s as if I decided to bake 1000 pineapple cakes and then feel bad that I didn’t interest 1000 people in paying me for pies they never ordered. It’s a risk when you do work without a guaranteed buyer.
And it’s the consumer who decides the value, not the writer. Whoever can pay decides what they are willing to pay. THAT is the value. Unless history decides it has great cultural value and dubs it a classic.
I might bake that pineapple pie and decide it’s worth 40 bucks. But the consumers may not come round unless I price it at 15. And THAT is it’s relevant value. What they will pay. If the pie is so fab that word of mouth makes it a coveted item, then maybe I can price it at 40 and keep a viable business. That’s why folks will pay for Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Nora Roberts and such a higher priced book than Author No-Name or Author Not-My-Fave.
I have TWO authors for which I’ll pay whatever the preorder price is. TWO. And soon it will be ONE. I’m getting crankier about those high ebook prices. And when my fave current series is done..maybe NONE.
But 14 bucks for a fiction ebook? You better be Jim Butcher and that better be a Dresden novel or forget it.
I envy Canadian authors because they get a royalty each time one of their books is checked out of a Canadian library, or an e-book uploaded. Too bad the Author’s Guild hasn’t lobbied for that.
I still believe a life position and business strategy is to “give” and don’t worry about receiving. What I mean by that is giving support to your local writers, organizations, and to writing friends and acquaintances near and far. Write because you love to writer. Unless you are a freelancer who must publish to eat, then only break a sweat with the promo-platform thing as you want and care to do.
Years ago, one of my writing students chose a Marketing Monday. One day she gave to marketing. Let’s say 50 Mondays a year to develop your network of support for like-minded authors.
In return, whatever price you set for your indie books, you’ll make more sales than from any other way.
I have watched this in action with one friend of mine who just topped 100K sales from a combined 6-8 novels, mostly sold to Kindle users. Her talent is not extraordinary, but she is noted for her generosity and good humor. She doesn’t tweet or instagram, but she writes blog articles and with so many books behind her, let’s her contacts who have previously posted her articles and interviews, know about a next novel.
It’s a more natural way of selling. Grassroots and support of the village.
Hi, David,
Actually no need to get a bogus library card. You can get a real one and use it to save a lot of money on borrowing rather than buying print books or buying the licenses to ebooks (you don’t own an ebook, as you probably know, just a license to read it).
This has always been the case, long before digital. What studies show is that library readers make good book buyers and that libraries are a fine platform for the discovery of work you like and great channels of literature and other services for an intelligent population.
I don’t think it’s the library system that has diminished the public’s understanding of the value of authors’ work, actually. For the most part, I think libraries help develop the new readerships we need and help nurture new understanding and appreciation of writers.
And in any case, no, don’t quit your day job. :)
Good to have you along, thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Insightful post, Porter.
We are, as authors, the perceived value we adhere to ourselves, our books, and our careers. If we don’t think we’re ‘worthy’, no one will.
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Agree with you there, Denise, the perception of value has to start with writers, themselves — which is the same reason I’m always trying to get writers to credit each other in tweets, etc. It’s amazing to me how many writers will talk about “a story in the Times” without caring or naming who wrote it. The Times has never written a thing.
Many areas to work on in terms of awareness and how easily we can contribute to being overlooked in society.
Thanks for reading and responding!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter–
What is there to say? Bitterness isn’t a useful state of mind, for writers or anyone else. I do my best, but in “the current climate,” bitterness is sometimes hard to avoid.
The main reason I keep writing can be found in the law of inertia: bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. As a writer, I set myself in motion decades ago. Whatever worldly motives energized me then are now like sepia-tinted photos, full of swagger and resolve, taken during the Civil War. But writer I was then, and will remain.
All that said, it’s good to know the truth, to have people like you who know the facts of life in this business, and make what you know clear for the rest of us. That applies to sites like Writer Unboxed, sites that give writers information, inspiration, etc., not to mention the chance to be heard.
As for “gatekeeper,” I think it’s time to retire the term. Hamlet says “Denmark is a prison.” In some sense, the writing game is holding most of us hostage now, so let’s replace “gatekeeper” with “turnkey.”
Hey, Barry,
Agreeing with you as I do about bitterness, I think I’d extend that prohibition even to such ideas as that “the writing game is holding most of us hostage now.”
If anything, that concept has a Pirandellic fascination to it.
No one is held hostage by the writing game. But so seductive is the idea of “author” that the digital enablement of publishing can hold people in its thrall, some of them feeling, I’m sure, imprisoned.
But the bars of that conceit are imaginary. There’s no turnkey. And gatekeepers are just people working to the best of their ability in forms of curation that don’t recognize many who’d like to be recognized.
Nothing so dramatic as imprisonment is going on here. And sometimes it’s good for all of us to smile and remind each other: It’s just writing. :)
Thanks, Barry,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I think the problem lies in the vast quantity of poorly written books on the market. When I find a well-written book with a great story, I’ll pay to get my hands on more of the same. Trouble is it is hard to find those well written books amidst the onslaught of new (and old) books on the market. This is why reviews are so critical. But I firmly believe true works of art will shine and make money for the author.
Hi, Amanda, and thanks for reading the article and responding.
The only thing I’d caution you about in your good comment is your final line: “I firmly believe true works of art will shine and make money for the author.”
With all respect, one of my biggest concerns is in just that kind of magical thinking.
There really is nothing that says that “true works of art” can be recognized in any marketplace, even earlier Kasbahs less challenging than ours. (Dying in obscurity has happened to some very fine people in history, after all.)
Today, I think it’s harder perhaps than ever before to think that “good” work (eye of the beholder, let’s remember) will rise to the top. In no way is that a given and, in fact, a great deal of what we see happening suggests that “good” work can sink like a rock and be overlooked forever.
I don’t say this to depress you or to be hurtful, by any means. And of course, you’re entitled to any article of faith you choose. (I note that you said you “believe,” and so you may indeed be putting this forward as an article of faith.)
What is important, though, is for those of us who work to assess the dynamics of this market and its players to speak up and point out that from what we can tell on the ground, there’s simply no reason to think that somehow “true works of art will shine and make money for the author.”
While we may love the idea of good work succeeding, the taller that Wall of Content gets, the harder it becomes for good work to be differentiated. Keeping this in mind can help us all remember the level of sheer commitment that success requires. That level rises with the summit of content. And a good, clear-eyed understanding of this may well be any artist’s best friend these days.
Thanks again, Amanda, and all the best with your work.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I was thinking about popular books like Twilight and Harry Potter and even Fifty Shades of Gray in my comments. All have received their share of criticism and as far as I know, all were unknown authors before these books. So what was the magic? Is it just dumb luck? I tend to think its the story that sells. And if there’s a good one it will get some attention over time. All it takes is one reader who tells one more and so on. That said, what do I know? I am coming at this more from a reader’s standpoint. And as you pointed out, I like to stay positive. My first book won’t be out until the fall, and maybe I’ll have a whole new outlook then.
Great post. Porter, as always. As a writer trying to break in, I struggle with the self-publishing question. As the world grows, the population grows, the ability to churn out material grows and someone rises up and decides what is publishable and what is not. And it varies so widely. I read praised books and think, really? And so that affects writers who then decide to self-publish and thus have in some ways messed up the old system. It’s an argument with many facets and I’m not sure it will ever sort itself out. I do want to publish, would love to go the traditional route. I do want readers and would love for those readers to PAY for my work and not just 99 cents. But I confess, I also use the library on a regular basis. Budgetary issues. I read a lot and when I can I fill my bookshelves with books and my computer with novels that I dream about publishing.
Hey, Beth,
I think the thing to remember is that your path forward is just that. As you write and develop your work, you’ll know and understand better which moves to make to support your own work.
It’s futile to try to get any sort of consistency out of what you read in someone else’s success. Of course there are books published by the trade that you don’t like very much. That doesn’t mean the trade is bad. And there may be books you find terrific in the indie sector, and that doesn’t mean the independent route is good. And vice versa. And vice versa. And again vice versa. Precious little rhyme or reason lies out there. This is creativity, an industry built on it, and thus a subjective landscape.
All these things mean is that you’re discerning what work you like and don’t like. This is what you need to know to write what’s meaningful for you. And then its best route to readership will be apparent.
The discussions we have here are about the context in which your career is playing out. But there’s as much to discover about what you’re doing as there is about what everybody else is doing.
Some people in this comment chain have become enmeshed in a curious non sequitur about libraries. Others about financial wealth vs. poverty. Others about independent publishing vs. trade publishing.
All we started out talking about, though, was how we value the work of writers at a time when book prices are very low.
Don’t let the wilfull tangents of others distract you.
There are weak thinkers on all sides.
There are people who find they have so little traction as writers that the time they spend trading insults and gossip become attractive escapes for the rigors of their prose.
And there are people who are simply so angry on so many levels that they’ll grasp anything that can give them a chance to vent.
The real value lives in your time with your work, with yourself. The context of the industry is critical to understand, yes. But the emotional reactions to that context of so many people are of no value.
Keep at it.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
It has always seemed to me to be a discoverability vs income issue. I appreciated James Scott Bell’s comment above, and agree that building a readership requires time. However, if you self-publish and want to get that first book out attention, it seems low-pricing/free pricing is the best way to get people to take the risk of reading your work. Even if they don’t read it, it gets your book up in the ranks and increases the chances more readers will see it. But, no, you don’t make money. It appeared to me to be a choice – do I want to start finding readers or do I want to be paid but not have anyone buy the book because they don’t want to risk spending their money on an unknown.
So, truth telling time. My one book has a decent rating on both Amazon and Goodreads (from only 100 reviews combined, I guess 51 on Amazon, 60+ on Goodreads with some overlap) but has never sold well. With free downloads it’s easily on 10,000 e-readers, but I noticed a long time ago that if I raised the price over $.99, I pretty much could guarantee no sales. I also noticed that the free promotions didn’t really ever lead to rebound sales.
For a long time I left the price low hoping to encourage sales, but finally decided I didn’t like the feeling of having my book priced at $.99. I raised the price to $2.99 and stopped paying attention to it at all. It wasn’t about what I thought a reader would think about the pricing, but about my own perception about myself and my work. I knew my ranking and sales would drop off the charts, but decided I needed to do it anyway.
However, I’m not trying to make a living off my writing,either. I wanted to at one point, but (because of the things you listed in this article) I’ve kind of given up. Now I write and publish for a conglomeration of reasons that doesn’t include the hope of making a career change. It all just became too overwhelming to sort out. :)
Hi, Lara, always good to hear from you, and sorry for the very very late reply, it’s been a long week.
I actually like your line, “It all just became too overwhelming to sort out.” Not because I’m happy to hear you had to go through the frustration of feeling so overwhelmed, of course, but because you did a lot of good thinking, and choice-making.
You decided that 99 cents wasn’t okay with you.
You decided to change to a price you felt better about.
And you decided to shift your expectations of what might come from your writing and move forward for reasons that, clearly, make more sense to you than this (often senseless, capricious) marketplace has to offer.
This is not a giving-up, this is adapting, and I can applaud that.
Recently, I heard a panel speaker talk about how important it is to separate goals from dreams, something terribly hard to do. Many writers, for example, want to be Stephen King. That’s a dream. And it’s one that won’t come true. On the other hand, the idea to publish, by one means or another, this or that book, is a goal and it’s something you can work toward achieving.
If we’re careful to dwell in the land of goals, not dreams, less disappointment and more potential success is obviously available. I think this is what you’re doing. You’re working toward some goals, and you’ve moved yourself out of the way of crashing dreams.
This is healthy. Congrats.
And thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Well said. the difference between our goals and dreams. I’ll keep that nugget in mind as I press forward. Thanks, Porter!
Nicely put. This topic can send me into an unattractive teeth-gnashing mood I like to call BWS (Bitter Writer Syndrome). It helps to laugh and remember we’re in this together. The romance genre in particular is insane right now. I keep watching the market and wondering if the digital subscription model will be viable in the long run.
Hi, Noelle,
Since you’ve mentioned the romance sector, if you’ll be at RWA in July in San Diego, do consider the all-new one-day conference there (on July 14) by Nielsen’s book research folks, the Romance Book Summit. I have a story announcing it here, and I can recommend it — I know the organizers quite well and I think that this event is going to go a long way to put some really helpful, rational context on the romance genre today, with its many challenges and opportunity. Here’s the story https://bit.ly/1RyyLDQ
And thanks for your note, and for reading me here.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Every day you see ebooks for free or for 0.99 cents. You end up with a general low price for books.
Hi, Leticia, and thanks for that succinct statement. That gets it.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I read voraciously as a child and teen. My public library didn’t have much in the way of variety, and it certainly lacked in diversity. I had the same problems as a struggling college student. I loved to read, but couldn’t afford to purchase many books. My solution was to shop the bargain aisles at Barnes and Noble. Ebooks didn’t exist when I was growing up.
Fast forward and I’m on the verge of publishing the kinds of books I wanted to read as a teen and young adult. The teens and new adults who will constitute my audience still can’t afford a $24 new book release. For many of them, even a $7.99 ebook is out of the question.
I’m in the camp that believes that these readers should be able to access well written and edited books too. Books that the traditional publishing model has not seen fit to provide for them. As a writer that means I’m taking the indie route and pricing my books lower so that this market has the same opportunity to develop the joy of reading that I did.
None of us want to see our work devalued, and I cringe when I see discussions in social media where readers complain about the price of a $4.99 ebook. I’m not sure what the solution is, but whatever it is, it must keep the reader—the one who longs to devour books as I once did—front and center.
I agree with you. While I understand the starving artist concept, it sometimes gives the impression that artists are the only one pinching pennies.
Hey, Grace,
Sorry for the slow response.
You know, you have every reason to price your books as low as you can if you think that this is important for the socio-economic bracket of the audience you’re targeting.
As I understand it, you’re working in diversity-driven content and trying to reach an under-served readership that isn’t always able to pay the prices that the traditionally produced books might charge.
This, then, is a case in which a low prices is very much an element of what you’re doing and part and parcel of your project’s intent. I see no reason whatever for you to try to “price up” in such a circumstance, and wish you well with your project.
Basically, the kinds of concerns about devaluation of writing in the mind of the public based on bargain-basement pricing just doesn’t apply in a situation like yours. It sounds to me as if you’re doing the right thing, and more power to you.
If at some point you write for the wider market without the special constraints of a readership limited in its funding, then that’s a different matter and I’m sure you’d want to consider carefully how you handled pricing — and what signals you might send with it. But you’re not working in the general marketplace with this project, and there are many special cases and scenarios in which different criteria apply.
All the best with it, and thanks,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Who do I think I am? I know who I am, I’m me. I also live (for the most part) in moderation.
That Wall of Content? I love that wall! It is glorious. That wall is the reason I go to bookstores and libraries. I am filling every wall in my house with content. (I don’t do e-books, yet.)
I’ve never doubted for a moment that you know who you are, Tina. :) The question of course was asked in the context of the lines that precede it.
And I wish you joy of the Wall of Content. You’ll be thrilled: it’s getting only higher.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I’ve been tracking an indy novelist I know. After writing several novels and having suffered, literally, 100s of agent rejection letters, she reached the f-it point. She wasn’t writing for money; she was writing because she loved writing, and she wanted others to enjoy her writing too.
She told me that the community of writers, especially the indy e-book authors, is very sensitive to mutual support. The me-me-me author is not going to get help passing the word. Instead of scratching her head about how to promote a title, she writes reviews, and offers mini blog articles to dozens of sites that her readers might frequent. Blog owners need content–not just offers/requests to be interviewed, but content, too. She supplies content for the blog owner and in turn her book covers are posted and she gets responses to her blog articles, which are often obliquely related to a character or plot. Soft sell.
She doesn’t Twitter and doesn’t push her books on FB. She just made the 100,000-sold mark. She has a loyal readership, and as Don Maass said, that is how books are purchased/sold–by word of mouth.
It doesn’t matter, in my opinion, whether indy e-books have created a tsunami of crap writing. That is not how readers search for their next book. They look for favorite authors.
If there is a secret, no matter the pricing, it is the Golden Rule. To writers, don’t be self-centered; extend yourself to other writers, indy and traditional. I don’t think the Big 5, or however many big publishers are left, have ever suggested to authors that they promote other authors as part of promoting their own.
Well said, Elizabeth. I think we have to not only work on our books, but encourage each other/promote works we know are good.
I’ve found the indie community to be one of the most supportive communities around. For the most part, they promote other authors in their genre, not seeing them as competition (a rising tide and all that) and they share what worked with them to reach readers. The top piece of advice I hear from successful indies beyond write well and write often, is get professional editing and book cover design. Every indie who wants to establish a career as a writer must do these things, and low pricing won’t help them if they don’t.
Grace, you’ve made a point I could not agree with more–about the supportive community and that low pricing is unlikely to make much of a difference.
I am heavily biased since I work as a book editor (although I refer line and copy-editing to editors who specialize in that). I do cringe any time I see a “free” promo by an indy author. They may not intend it, but I conclude that they do not value their work, i.e., the original point in this blog. I told one indy author who held such a free limited time offer that I was buying his novel because I didn’t believe in not supporting writers.
For all the justifiable reasons that Amazon is loathed, I am thrilled it gives indy authors access to the buying public. With my first two booklets on writing craft, I formatted them for Nook and Kobo too, but Amazon has produced about 99% of my sales.
For twenty years or longer (I self-published my first book in ’81), I had been waiting and hoping for the self-publishing “revolution” because I so firmly believe that every writer deserves to complete the circle, from creation to audience. It is a satisfaction like none other to hold your book in your hands (if you also make POD copies).
Many of my editing clients have put a decade or more into writing a single book. It may not yet reach the standards of professional writing, but clearly, this book is a life work. Sales may be 5 or 500, but I salute their achievement.
Great points, Elizabeth. I think the thing that people struggle with about the lower-priced or free entry books, is that they represent a very successful marketing tactic for many writers. Some creatives struggle with that notion and I understand why. But depending on audience and genre, the entry-point pricing works because if the writer is able to create a fan with their initial book, readers are less price sensitive to future books.
And yes, there are people who hoard free books and will probably never purchase them, but when you think about it, these types of readers (and I believe they deserve to read as much as the next person) aren’t the types who would have ever bought a $19.99 hardcover release in the first place. I really don’t think that the .99 cent book hoarders and the $19.99 book buyers are the same audience – yes, there’s some overlap, but they’re essentially different markets and therefore need to be viewed that way.
That said, I have a marketing background so I embrace this side of writing and publishing. I actually love it. I guess that leads me to view it with a different lens. By the way, I’m also a stylistic editor (pursuing my certification from University of Chicago) so I’m working on creating the perfect balance between the craft and commerce of a writing career. :-)
It’s the Indie-tactic that pushed us up in the game..
Call me dense, Dean. I don’t understand what you’re saying. Which Indie-tactic and clueless me, what is the game?
The perma-free lead-in to book series where the first is free and the following installments are slightly more. Or, in other words, I’m referencing the tactic that put most Indie Authors in the game…Joanna Penn, Amanda Hocking, Hugh Howey, etc.
It is unfortunate, what is happening to the world of pricing in books, but it will eventually die off, like any fad, and become the new norm.
It is no different, what happened to music artists & free platforms for listeners, that is now happening to authors.
A great, informative article.
Here is my strategy: Because I have pride and confidence in my
books, I won’t participate in giving away the ebook editions for
either Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Select. I also refuse to price any of my ebooks below $7.97 unless it is a book of quotations. Offering my books for free or 99 cents or even $2.99 would severely cheapen what I have to offer.
Marketing guru Seth Godin called the strategy of low ball pricing: “Clawing Yourself to the Bottom.” I totally agree.
Seth Godin stated:
“Trading in your standards in order to gain short-term attention or profit isn’t as easy as it looks. Once-great media brands that now traffic in cheesecake and quick clicks didn’t get there by mistake. Respected brands that rushed to deliver low price at all costs had to figure out which corners to cut, and fooled themselves into thinking they could get away with it forever. As the bottom gets more and more crowded, it’s harder than ever to be more short-sighted than everyone else. If you’re going to need to work that hard at it, might as well put the effort into racing to the top instead.”
Indeed, clawing your way to the bottom costs you the chance to make a decent living. It also costs you your reputation and your self-esteem.
Incidentally, last year I raised the price of the print edition of my “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free” from $16.95 to $19.95. The price was $16.95 since I self-published the book in 2004. The sales of the print edition have not been affected at all.
In short, when your book doesn’t measure up, the answer may be to charge a lot less for it. If you have a great book, however, the answer is to charge more for it than the substandard competition charges for theirs.
For the record, I have come up with 75 to 100 of my own unique marketing techniques that 99 percent of authors and book marketing experts are not creative enough to come up with. I have used similar unique marketing techniques to get over 111 books deals with various foreign publishers around the world. These techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing.
Here is my best advice for self-published authors who want to sell a lot more copies of their books. Don’t do what the majority is doing. Instead, do the opposite of what the majority is doing.
One of my next marketing techniques is to take a billionaire to dinner — and I don’t plan to cheap out.
Ernie J. Zelinski
International Best-Selling Author
“Helping Adventurous Souls Live Prosperous and Free”
Author of the Bestseller “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free”
(Over 275,000 copies sold and published in 9 languages)
and the International Bestseller “The Joy of Not Working”
(Over 290,000 copies sold and published in 17 languages)
Ernie Zelinski, I agree with your strategy never to sell yourself down. I too absolutely refuse to give my novels away.
HOWEVER, when you speak of merchandising non-fiction books, and I speak of novels,s we’re talking apples and oranges. It is relatively easy to find the market for non-fiction. For fiction, however, it is like fishing with a fly rod in the middle of the great heaving Sargasso Sea of flotsam. I know I’m good. How does anyone else find out?
Exactly, Lyn.. I’m struggling with the idea myself. I agree. That thinking out of the box is always a good idea, but what better tactic could there be for “fiction” than to offer it cheaply, so readers will take a chance on discovering new authors?? Especially within a series. I don’t think I can do permafree.. But, as much as it kills me…offering book 1 for $.99, then uping progressively seems fair to all. IDK..
No, I’m a stubborn old witch. I won’t mark it down, won’t sell it short. I’ve never been driven by sales, so what I think doesn’t count. My sales are slow, low, unspectacular – but they are sales, and I’m sure there is word-of-mouth.
The value of e-books, in my mind, is that nobody lends an e-book to a friend.
On the other hand, my friends keep lending my print copies (copy) to their friends and family and who knows how many people –
And this is what friends do. They never think that they’ve just cost me a sale by lending their book. No, they’ve given me a new reader.
It’s a tough life, but I won’t bend.
loved what you had to say, Lyn! Gaining new readers…I will make this as my goal!
“The value of e-books, in my mind, is that nobody lends an e-book to a friend.”
I’ve been following this really excellent article (Thanks Porter) and all the replies with a great deal of interest. With the greatest respect though, Lyn, I would argue that this is the main disadvantage of E-books. No-one ‘lends’ one to a friend, because in doing so, they are actually making a copy – so theirs remains on their reading device, whatever it may be, and the copy is sent to the friend, who can then make another copy and send it to another friend, and so on. Eventually you could have a hundred copies out there, only one of which was actually paid for, and they do not even register as downloads because they were sent as attachments. This is how Pirate Sites operate and it’s a nightmare. As an author published by a reputable small press, I have given up trying to keep pace with the pirates. As fast as one is closed down, it reforms under a new name – selling stolen books to unsuspecting readers who pay a small fee for the privilege.
OMG !! (Can I say that?)
I had no idea that we can ‘copy’ our ebooks. I have a Kindle reader, but have never yet finished reading any of the titles loaded into it. In fact, I’ve actually bought print copies of a couple of my ebooks because I did want to read them.
But I had no idea I could copy them.
The ‘copy’ occurs if you store the book on a computer hard-drive and email it to someone else. In the same way as sending a photo to a friend makes a copy of the photo so you don’t lose the original. I don’t think it would work the same way if a book is downloaded direct onto your Kindle – but it is quite possible to download and read on a PC or Laptop and then send it to a Kindle as well. It’s OK to make copies for multiple devices of your own, but it is not legal to send to a friend or anyone else. The difference between that and loaning someone a hard copy is that there is still technically only one hard copy – sending e-books is the equivalent of photocopying the whole book, also illegal. Some publishers use DRM (Digital Rights Management) to prevent e-book copying but not all do, and I’m not sure how it’s done for authors who self publish.
I have a free Kindle reader on my hard drive, PLUS I can download another copy to my Kindle device AND I can transfer an ebook from one to the other.
Amazon sure knows how to shoot itself in the foot.
I believe one outcome of this is that here in Australia (where politicians have no idea of creative worth and probably don’t care) there is currently a proposal to limit copyright on an author’s work to 15 or 25 years. That means that for many long-time authors their earlier books would be fair game for anyone. It’s a manifestation of the idea that digital is “easy and free” or at least bargain price.
Just an extra point too – a friend who reads voraciously on Kindle has just told me that if she buys something (even at $4.99) and it’s rubbish, she returns it to Amazon and is given a refund. I have no idea how that ties in with payment per page read, but … a further devaluation, as like any reader, she is being subjective. I have my public library for returns. I can’t imagine taking a print book back to the bookstore and saying, “It’s crap, I want my money back”. But are we heading that way? Four years to write that book, no matter what a reader thinks of it, and it becomes like a faulty toaster.
“…a friend who reads voraciously on Kindle has just told me that if she buys something (even at $4.99) and it’s rubbish, she returns it to Amazon and is given a refund.”
Wow. I didn’t know they did that. I’m even more shocked to think someone would try and return a book for that reason. The only reason I would expect a refund on a book is if I ordered a physical copies and the cover or pages were torn. Not because I didn’t like it.
Seems to me that if you try to return a book to the bookstore just because you don’t like it, they would refuse a refund. But I’ve never tried to do that. Has anyone ever tried, and got a refund?
Seems to me that the bookstore would deny it because the book has been opened, and its pages spread, and it LOOKS used.
Sort of like driving a new car off the lot. Bingo. Used!
Lyn, I used to work in a bookstore, and people did it quite frequently. The generally wouldn’t say that they’d tried to read it and didn’t like it, though. They’d say it was a gift and they already had it, or they bought it for someone who turned out not to like that genre, or something to that effect.
Our general policy was to stand the book on its end to see what the pages did. If it’s been read, the pages spread and you can easily tell. Then we’d say that, no, we can’t give a refund. But, when push came to shove, if the customer was rude and aggressive enough, they’d usually end up with an exchange at the very least. Because as much as it feels justified to stand your ground in the face of an obviously lying bully, no $15 paperback is worth being abused over.
Yes, Jo, I once had a summer job in a bookstore, and the bottom line seemed to be (a) no returns for used books, but (b) do not lose the customer. It was a dance for balance.
It was the best summer job I ever had: I got to buy books at wholesale price.
As a hybrid, I see the indie community becoming highly skeptical of FREE as a promotional tool. KU killed sales for many of us, and we don’t forget that. Amazon’s heavy discounting of the ebook arose at a time when the economy was in the tank and promotional pricing would result in the greatest reach (2009-2010). Amazon was determined to win the device wars and willing to flood the market with free content as a result. Amazon has LOST the device wars, and at some point, their endless stock of freebies will no longer pull traffic to them. Among authors I know, free is fading (especially indiscriminate free) because it just doesn’t work as well as a discovery tool.
As an author, my coping mechanism is to write the best books I can, and make very, very sparing use of free and heavy discounts. Then too, I think all the major houses ought to be investing in direct sales platforms. Amazon paid the cost of training the readers to buy books online and read the books on devices. Now, everybody who owns a smartphone, PC, or tablet is equipped to buy books from any source. Why not buy from the publisher/author?
Selling direct means you keep all the revenue, you keep the data, you keep the reader relationship. Sideloading isn’t that complicated. The readers figured how to use devices, and they can figure out sideloading. Or the major houses can keep tithing 30 percent to an organization that has its own agenda.
In this whole discussion, the topic of piracy also plays a role, as do the reasons Google, Amazon, and other major players do almost nothing nothing about it. The number of books that have been pirated from me far exceeds the number of free downloads pried from my aching, cramped, exhausted finger.
“Now, everybody who owns a smartphone, PC, or tablet is equipped to buy books from any source.”
If I may respond again as a reader… I’m not for or against direct sales by the author, but I will say that as a reader one of the reasons I buy from Amazon is their outstanding customer service (although I have rarely had any issues with them at all) and I feel 100% secure in placing orders with them. Maybe I am less techy than the “average” reader but I can tell you I’m not going to plunk down my credit or debit card info to every individual or site on the internet. And yes, I even have a distrust of Paypal because I’ve had a bad experience with them before (albeit a while ago now).
But probably there are enough people out there who aren’t particularly wary about personal data security that it would still be well worthwhile to buy direct.
Good point, and Amazon has worked hard to earn your trust and create a brand that’s trustworthy with a customer shopping experience second to few. Meanwhile, they’re tracking what time of day you read, how fast you read, what words you have to look up, what passages you highlight, what scenes you read three time at 11 pm, where you bounce at the end of the shopping session, where you came from, and some fine day, you might wake up, and find the most trusted brand has decided–for reasons they are under no obligation to disclose-that you should lose access to all of the books you “bought” with that one-click button. They can do that, and they have. You agreed to their TOS, and that means you may never see the books you thought you owned again. Everybody should be careful with their credit cards–and with their trust and their privacy.
“that you should lose access to all of the books you “bought” with that one-click button. ”
Trust me, I’ve wondered a number of times what would happen to my ebooks if Amazon went belly up or some other issue arose.
But in the realm of ebooks, I don’t see that anyone else would be any more reliable and it boils down to the fact that 1) I would have to be a millionaire to afford a home with all the bookshelves I’d need for paper books and 2) Print book dependence would mean I’d have a vastly smaller library b/c they are generally still very high compared to ebook versions. And there’s a 3) As I age, my demand for ebooks rises because I need adjustable font.
So it’s all a crapshoot but I have no choice but to gamble.
:)
The article asks, “How many of those things do you have to sell at $3.99—even if you’re getting 70 percent—to put together an income?”
The simple answer is a whole heck of a lot less than if you are only making 17% or less from a traditional publisher, as authorearnings.com has thoroughly documented.
And since you sell more at $3.99, it works out in a self-published author’s favor two ways. We make more from each ebook sale than my wife ever made from each paper or ebook sale when she was traditionally published, and she sells way more books also because they are lower priced.
Not to go too far away from the post, but the rise of the internet seems to have allowed many more people to have a voice, but at the same time devalued many things. Look at the music industry struggling with free streaming, photography, art, and even education. People are often asking to use my photographs, but no one is willing to pay to use them. I have no idea how many people use the ones posted online without even asking. I have no incentive to get better at my craft if it isn’t rewarded.
Correct, Roberta,
And thanks for your note.
The digital dynamic is an engine of distribution — this is the most important thing to understand. By removing the physical nature of the product (a CD, a physical book, etc.), it makes distribution easy and universal — and cheap.
To succeed, then, products suddenly need very big audiences, who are bombarded with more and more products that carry almost no cost of delivery. In turn, then, much more content is needed to keep the huge audience happy.
In short, it’s a cycle of cheaper goods provided to more people who want more goods cheaply. Supply and demand end up almost in a race to satisfy each other.
The best metaphor I’ve come up with yet to explain how digital works is to compare it to a wildfire. It needs ever more fuel (content) and, as it grows, it needs ever more oxygen (audience).
Over time, there’s less and less value attached to anything in the system because all is expanding in the rush and roar.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter. Great provocation, as always. This is a topic that fascinates and angers me in equal measure. (Although, oddly, I don’t find it depressing as many people seem to.)
The degradation and devaluation of authors and our creative work is actually part of a much bigger issue — the devaluation of art and artists in general. While this particular aspect is obviously of greatest concern to us as writers, I think it’s limiting not to consider the bigger picture. If nothing else, it’s much harder to draw conclusions on how we’ve got to this point, and how to move forward, when we get tied up in debates about whether publishers set prices that are too high/low, and the effectiveness of selling your indie-published book “for free”.
Yes, both of those things have an impact on the way readers value (or don’t value) or books. But they’re not the root cause. In fact, they are both symptoms of larger issues. It doesn’t take too much looking around to realise that the music industry is struggling (Hello to all the musicians giving away their original songs on YouTube!) and Netflix, YouTube, and various other media are transforming the TV and movie industry.
(On a side note, every single week in Australia we get to hear about how illegal downloads are destroying the TV industry — particularly on the day after the latest GoT episode airs, given that it’s not shown on Australian TV until at least a week later.)
So, yes, books and authors are affected. But so are creatives of all industries. (Including visual artists.) This isn’t just about ebook pricing, this is about us — as a society — devaluing creative work. And no amount of gatekeeping or price-changing is going to change that.
From a sociological perspective, a lot of this ties directly into the theories on post-modernity — a time period that covers from about mid-1980s to now — and the way that the virtues of rationalisation, efficiancy, and the McDonaldisation have affected our expectations of… well, everything. As far back as the 1990s, sociologists were predicting that an ever-growing focus on rationalisation, coupled with advanced capitalism, would result in a society wherein creativity and diversity would become unvalued. But let’s not go into that too much — unless you (like me) are intensely interested in sociologocal theories, it would get a bit boring.
So, instead, let me put forward the following two thoughts.
1. Once upon a time, back in the days of Dicks and Dickinson and Hemingway, entertainment was something to be valued. Whether it was a book or a trip to the theatre or a concert or dance hall, it was something that had meaning in comparison to the rest of people’s lives. It was something to look forward to. Even if it happened every week, or every evening, entertainment was a “treat”.
Contrast that with today’s world where entertainment isn’t special — it’s an expectation. We expect to be entertained. Every day. Every hour. Every minute. Between TV, movies, computers, the internet, books, comics, computer games, social media, Netflix, Candy Crush, audio books, theatres, etc, entertainment isn’t something we look forward to; it’s something we expect to be provided. And when something becomes an expectation — a basic human need, almost — we stop valuing it for its own sake, and start wanting it for what it gives us. And when we can get entertainment for free, we’re reluctant to pay for it. Our reasonably-prices, $15 books aren’t just competing with the Wall of Content (which is a great phrase), they’re also competing with all those other forms of entertainment. Why pay $15 for a book when you can spend the evening watching Netflix and chilling for free.*
2. It’s all about the marketing. And I don’t mean marketing of individual books (see above). I’m talking about the marketing of books overall. Let’s just have a chat about coffee for a minute. Because coffee has some absolutely phenomenal marketing going for it. People value coffee well above and beyond its actual worth, and pay accordingly.
I live just outside a small town with a population of just under 1000 people, with another 5000 people living within 5 miles of the village. The village currently has 10 dedicated coffee shops (plus other restaurants/establishments that serve coffee). That’s one coffee shop for every 100 people, including children. And every one of them does good business. Why? Because buying coffee is a cultural norm. Because it’s not just a hot, caffienated beverage, it’s a drink that is carefully distilled by a trained artisan using locally grown (or fair-trade sourced) organic coffee beans, roasted and ground using advanced technological process that enhances the flavour of your social experience. And, that? That, right there? That’s why people will happily pay $5 for a cup of warm milk infused with seed-juice.
Imagine how things would change if it became a cultural norm for people to gather and read a book crafted by a trained artisan using a local language that evolved organically over thousands of years, structured using advanced genre processes that enhance the emotional resonance of your literary experience.
Okay, that sounds like a mouthful of gobbledigook. But so does the line about coffee — we’re just used to it.
My point is simply this: Yes, our society devalues artists of all kinds, including writers. And it sucks. But we can’t fix it by arguing about price-points.
* Yes, Netflix isn’t actually free. But because we pay for it on a monthly subscription, it FEELS free. Plus, there’s a sense that we need to watch it as much as possible to get value for money.
Hi, Jo,
Sorry for not being back to you earlier, but this is exactly the right analysis of what’s happening.
Since I began my journalism career (at the time of the Magna Carta) as an arts critic and spent the first 12 years exclusively in criticism (theater, visual arts, music, and modern dance), I’m intensely aware of how right you are about this having to do with an erosion over about 70 to 80 years (at least as it falls out in the States) of society’s appreciation of cultural value.
Entertainment has simply won. This has to do with many things and some of them are quite taboo in our public discourse — intelligence, for example, comes into play here, as do educational values, socio-economically driven access (vs. no access), and even the power of the commercial industry, which uses cultural references only as means to advertise more entertainment.
The reason I don’t go at it in this much wider context in the Writer Unboxed setting is that I’ve found — not just at WU but throughout the author corps — a woefully narrow view of books, bookishness, writing, and literature among authors. To my dismay, most of the authors I meet don’t see “arts and letters” having anything to do with each other and don’t understand the cultural-entertainment axis as something they need to give any time or thought.
Indeed, in the self-publishing community, there’s a woefully zealous effort to talk very loudly in blog comments about the deliberate commoditization of books, which many indies seem to see as a way to snub the trade industry, implying that traditional publishers have thought of their work as as something much too important and precious. The indies who are pressing this line of thinking at the moment want to tell us, “they’re just books,” and to try to move the dialog past the kind of conversations that see literature as special. You can see some of this in the “anger-token exchanges,” as I call them — the blog comments — that followed my post here with a couple of very vehement pushbacks (Joe Konrath’s followers, etc.).
I know from working with the Museum of Modern Art and other organizations that at the very least the lines between what is entertainment and what is something deeper have been massively blurred. On the surface, this sounds good. One thinks that the populace should be able to engage in everything and not worry about labels and their dreaded class connotations.
However, what you begin to realize is that without the distinctions, there can be no discernment. And the population then doesn’t know, care, or understand that other options might have been available to them, might have changed their lives, might have meant so much more than yet another binged watching of a season of nonsense on television.
The parking lot on Friday night is filled with teens asking each other, “What are we going to do tonight?” The dance concert a block away is never considered. The museum’s late-night hours with live music a block in the other direction never even comes up. That poetry reading? Don’t even think about it.
The power of digitally distributed entertainment is blowing cultural endeavors right off the map, yes. I don’t have the answer, either. At the moment, it’s important to know this, not forget it, and watch for our chances to stake claims for better things.
We’ll find those chances. But right now they’re few and far between. And so for the moment, the only way to get a lot of writerly types to think even in the general direction of what we’re talking about is to focus just on their own pockets, purses, and bank accounts.
I, too, look forward to widening the debate some day. :)
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thought provoking comments, Jo. Particularly appreciated what you said about how entertainment is no longer valued–but a $5 cup of coffee is. What a great comparison! I’ve just moved to Greenville, SC and am amazed at the arts community here. I’ve never lived in a place that (at least from first glance) seems to value all the arts- visual, dramatic, music, & dance. From the schools where they even teach creative writing (something I haven’t seen in years) to the amount of performances available to the public. So, that leaves me encouraged.
But your points are well taken. In the McDonaldization of our culture, people want things fast and cheap. Writing a good/thought provoking book is neither. I just happened to hear Sam Zell say that people don’t value what they get for free. (I’m not supporting his economics, just saying what I heard.) My husband is a dentist and bemoans insurance taking over medicine and dentistry and says, “People have got to have skin in the game.”
In other words, we pay for what we value.
I’m hoping books will be in that category–and as Porter says, we need to be the ones writing good literature.
Well said, Carol,
And I should have mentioned in answering Jo that I liked her contrast with the coffee culture, too.
Long ago, the arts in our Western societies pretty much abdicated to commercial entertainment. This was an accident, of course, but it came along with the need for governmental subsidies, grants, donations…the arts in our cultures — the USA more than in Europe or even Australia — didn’t require themselves to live or die by their box offices. That has made them soft in terms of marketing and ingratiating themselves to the population. A huge mistake.
While you may be enjoying Greenville’s scene (I lived there many years ago before that trend had taken hold there), you’re in a pocket of such interest. This makes it all the more valuable but all the more sadly rare.
Until we can learn to make the power of digital distribution float cultural value as far and wide as it has done for entertainment value, we’re in trouble with any thought of real literature (of any genre) or artistic life on the wider scale.
It’s a tough time and we simply don’t know the way forward yet.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I think the point you’re missing is that as an independent author, I don’t have the overhead that a publisher has. I live in my office, so to speak. I have learned to do a lot of tasks such as making covers–which is actually quite fun. Some people like adult coloring books, I create covers for way more books than I will ever write. Anyway, with Vellum, formatting is a breeze, and that just leaves editing. Freelance editors are good and plentiful. I believe many of the publishing houses also use freelancers. (In fact, I turned down a contract with a publisher when they wanted my backlist for a song, offering me less per book than what I had paid my editor–and she was the same editor this publisher used! Talk about a deal for them! Get the author to pay the editor and basically, get the book for free.
Back to my point, if I don’t have the overhead, why in the world would I jack up my book price artificially? It doesn’t make sense and it’s not fair to readers.
I would rather sell a thousand books at $4.99 where I get to earn $3.50/sale, than roughly $2.40 on 200 sales of a $14.99 book. (and then have to pay an agent out of that $2.40)
Hi, “MP” — is that what we call you? I’m never sure when working with an author who uses only her or his initials.
Thank you for your comment.
In writing this piece, my interest is actually not in changing anything about what you might perceive as the smartest way to make money from your books.
My question has to do with the larger issue of what the most expedient route to your own earnings might do to the perception that reader-consumers have of the value of authors’ work beyond your own.
Literature — which includes all genres, including your supernatural thrillers, not just literary fiction — is something that has at times held a special place in the cultural self-definition of many great peoples. The digital dynamic brings it to the level of entertainment (because digital, an engine of distribution, seeks the biggest audience possible, and that is always for entertainment, not for more challenging, serious work).
My question has to do with what happens to the public’s understanding of literature — of culture, itself — when this historically unprecedented energy of digital distribution basically eclipses everything other than entertainment.
What price points you may enjoy and think of as perfectly logical to pursue may be having an effect, in concert with so many others piling more books on the Wall of Content, that is beyond your interest. It is not beyond mine.
And while I have nothing but respect for what you’re doing in your own work, I’m afraid I cannot be as interested in your idea that “jacking up” your prices — which I hardly asked you to do — doesn’t make sense, let alone your idea of what’s “fair to readers.”
I’m not at all sure that what’s happening in much of the books world today is “fair to readers.”
Because day by day they’re getting … exactly what they pay for.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
A provocative and well-stated piece as always, Porter. Thank you for your kind mentions. As usual, I’m in complete agreement with you here! Where is the balance and how will this end?
Heather, as with anything that evolves, do you think it will actually END anywhere? I suspect it will continue evolving, who knows where? In 1990, could we imagine where publishing is today?
Hey, Heather,
And thanks for the good input from your own experience, it helped me see how the pricing question can feel from the author’s standpoint.
Balance — in several parts of publishing — is definitely what we lose at times like these. The digital dynamic has upended so many things, not always in a bad way, either.
But if we start by saying it’s good for so many people to be able to publish who might not have had that capability beforehand, then we have to be willing to face the fact that some of the effects of that reality — so many people suddenly trying to sell their books — is not something our market system has had to handle. It’s not something we’re ready for.
Diving into very low pricing in order to attract a reader’s attention makes huge sense on many levels. It also may well mean that the reading public suddenly has a hard time understanding how what once cost $30 at the bookstore (a new book) suddenly is being offered for $1.99.
I tend to think that observers are right who say that readers are becoming much more savvy about ultra-low pricing. Getting what one pays for is still a concept, even in digital times. And yet, it’s also understandable that writers working without the support of publishers and mainstream mechanisms don’t want to hear this. A community as volatile as the independent author sector is will, I’m afraid, frequently seek the most defensive posture when presented with factors that don’t fit the inspiring ideas of fresh talent bursting onto the scene from left field. This is human nature and not always meant to be as abrasive as it is. (Much reaction to this column, as you know, has proven that point. Many of the blot-post commenters at other sites talking about my article are just exchanging anger tokens with each other: they make few points contrary to what we’re talking about here, but they’re angry and exercising that anger becomes, for many, more important than working toward truthful response.)
In the long run, all the emotion that surrounds issues like these will have far less place in our memories than the way we “end up” as you say (and as Lyn questions below) thinking of the value of books and writing. Lyn is right that things will keep evolving — we have to hope so, in all walks of life, or we’re all goners! But in fact, we will reach a better understanding of what signals we have crafted, intentionally or not, for our reader-consumers in the pricing maneuvers of the era.
We may not like what we discover is the longer lasting result of this time when we drove prices for authors’ work down, and down, and down, and those who yell so loudly that books must be thought of as simple commodities like hairspray and silverware may find themselves a lot less happy than they think with that context in the minds of their readers some day.
Time will tell us much more than even the most obstreperous blog-fight leaders, whose real token of presence in the community should lie in their actual work as authors, and less as politicians among their followers.
Today’s industry politics will be forgotten. The real sadness is that these loud, angry folks’ work as writers may be forgotten even more quickly.
And thanks again for the good thoughts.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
The ‘value’ of a book? This week I made an agreement with a man who loves to read, and who is unemployed. He will mow my acre of grass in return for a couple of my paperback novels. That will come out to approximately $15 per hour for his time. I provide the riding mower.