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Pricing for self-pub? (want feedback from erotica readers who purchase ebooks)

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Guest
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What are the pricing brackets per story length / genre / content that you're comfortable paying? Consider both self publishing and traditionally published. What is unreasonable? What is reasonable? At what point did you buy a story and feel you overpaid only after reading it?

I'm self publishing my longer works (never-mind that I self published two short stories. That was just to get the hang of how the whole concept works with formatting and so on. That was a toe-in-the-water approach). I don't like the commonly suggested pricing dynamics.

Pricing is just sporadic and all over the place - I've seen novellas (20K word - 40K) go from .99 (more like a promotional price) to $5.99. Odds are, there are some that are probably higher.

Now - when self publishing you have a few limits: any prices not ending in a .99 are either not possible - or won't be aggregated to various stores like iBookstore. So a price ending in .99 seems to be universal.

So I was thinking of this:

Short stories less than 8K will be made free at places like Lush. If I put shorts into a book with a few other short stories it will be priced at $1.99
Anywhere between that 8K and up to 25K will be 1.99
Between 25K and 40K will be $2.99
40K - 55K will be 3.99
55K - 65K will be 4.99
65K + will be 5.99

And I'll stop it there as I have no intent on writing anything over 80K - it might happen. If anything is longer than that it would be an anthology of shorts, most likely.

Thoughts on this?
nicola
Matriarch
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I went through a large number of Selena's ebooks, and this was an approx breakdown:

< 10K words = $0.99

10K-15K words = $1.99

16K – 29K words = $2.99

30K - 39K words = $3.99

40K+ words = $4.99

That's from a publishing perspective.

Hopefully you get some good feedback from readers.
Guest
Lurker
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Yeah - that's what others support in an effort to standardize things.

Maybe it's just me being all super negative about myself. "it's not worth 3.99!" lol
ChrissieLecker
Story Verifier
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Quote by Metilda
Short stories less than 8K will be made free at places like Lush. If I put shorts into a book with a few other short stories it will be priced at $1.99
Anywhere between that 8K and up to 25K will be 1.99
Between 25K and 40K will be $2.99
40K - 55K will be 3.99
55K - 65K will be 4.99
65K + will be 5.99


To me, 5.99 for 65k words feel overpriced for an erotica ebook unless the author is an established one and there's as good as a guarantee that it will be a well-written book that meets my taste. There are a lot of myths out there about ebook pricing, and most don't hold up to scrutiny - it's not that much of a difference in reading experience if a story has 50k words or 58k, but a dollar more may cut sales by half.

The biggest problem will be that you're competing with a flood of dunderheads who publish crappy short shorts for unreasonable prices, so you'll have to find the best balance between not getting swept up between the masses of 1.99$ and 2.99$ priced text snippets and still keeping in the range readers are willing to pay. I'd personally go for an upper limit of 4.99$ - there's always this psychological barrier in our heads about tens and halves of ten - and see that there are trigger words like 'Full length novel' at the start of the teaser text.
Guest
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Yes - to me length doesn't necessarily drive the price, which is why I'm stumbling over this.

Take my novella, for example - Religious allegory, symbolism, twist ending - etc etc etc - all disguised as an erotica. In the end, I wrote a story that's more complicated than any erotica book I've read per concept. I've written non-erotica that was much easier to get through that that dang story. Yet, marketing it as erotica means I need to adhere to the market wants and desires.

And so . . . $2.99 and not $3.99. I feel like if I overprice then I'm declaring some sort of superiority or something.

If I was well known I would feel more comfortable going further.
nicola
Matriarch
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To put things in perspective, I've bought novels by world renowned authors, for $8. This for example.

Why would I pay even half that, for a book from someone I've never heard of?

That's why it's critical to build up a following and get yourself known. Really known.
Jayne33
Velvet-Voiced Titillator
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Quote by nicola
To put things in perspective, I've bought novels by world renowned authors, for $8. This for example.

Why would I pay even half that, for a book from someone I've never heard of?

That's why it's critical to build up a following and get yourself known. Really known.



^^ This. ^^

I think it's always going to be easier to pull in a few more purchases from new readers, if you've got some good sales and reviews from a following. As Chrissie said the market is flooded and you have to work hard to stand out and pull in sales.

With regards to price: If I was buying from an author that I knew and loved then I'd be willing to stretch to a little more, but I don't think I've ever paid anything more than £4.99 for a ebook.

As a strategy it could be worth publishing a book with a few different short stories in it for a cheaper price, then publish your more substantial story as well, but for a little bit more. Once people have read the cheaper version, (which they're more likely to part cash for, if they've never read you before) if they like your style they have the option to spend a little more.
Guest
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Quote by nicola
To put things in perspective, I've bought novels by world renowned authors, for $8. This for example.

Why would I pay even half that, for a book from someone I've never heard of?

That's why it's critical to build up a following and get yourself known. Really known.



So: new story, new author scenario: based on an excerpt and a blurb that has your interest . . . you'd pay what for a novel?

I've bought novels for $4.99 but no more from authors that don't have a substantial literary presence. Even for some authors who are successful and well known I tend to be uneasy about paying more than $8. I tend to read excerpts of that work - or another work - to see if I want to read them at all.

For my novel in progress I can see myself pricing it at $4.99. That actually gives me room to do promotional discounts at some places and later on I can raise the price if I want.
sandymonroe
Advanced Wordsmith
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30 K and 2.99 USD for my latest - do you agree?
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