Pricing Ebooks in Todays Market

The problem is nobody knows how to price an ebook. The publishers don't and neither do the authors because there is no floor and the market is in flux. Nobody knows where the threshold lies for a book without a physical presence. How do you price something that costs nothing to produce? And whats worse how do you price something that a lot of people are giving away for free?

That is the hell of todays publishing market. There is no way to set a market. In the print book arena there was always production costs so you had to cover that and make a little. This kept everyone from going too low too fast. But in the ebook market the race to the bottom is very quick. In fact some people start out at the bottom and go up from there. The inverse of a print book. The problem is you are trying to find where people will buy and the maximum price point.

It is this intersection that the rubics cube of ebooks can be solved. You cant set your price too high or you will kill the market. You cant set it too low or people will think your book is not worth anything and pass over it. You need to find the middle and this comes from experimenting. What will work with one book and one author will not necessarily work with another.

So really like the internet it is the Wild West. There will be a point where it settles down but don't look for that anytime soon. We are really just getting started.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

The Pitcher is #1...How Books Are Sold Now

            The Pitcher is currently #1 in these categories.

• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Urban
• #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Literature & Fiction > Sports
• #1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Urban Life

 

The Pitcher is selling more right now than monster Bestsellers published by the largest publishers. Book selling has changed permanently. The fight between Amazon and traditional publishers is really the last Battle of the Bulge in a war that has been going on for some time. The fact is that books used to be sold very differently.

 

The stage was narrow because of the physicality of bookstores. Literally stores could only stock so many books and so the Big Authors or Bestsellers were put out where everyone could see them. These books were purchased first and behind them were some obscure midlist authors that were purchased occasionally. Finally was everyone else who never saw the light of day. There just wasn't room.

 

Now in the digital age authors are on equal footing. Of course the Bestsellers dominate the bookstores and always will but people are shopping with their computers and that is taking the lack of space out of the equation. Independent bookstores are still vital because they do bring forth the undiscovered but for the digital shopper the author can bring him or herself forth and have the same displaying power of even a giant like Grisham or a James Patterson.

 

Now a book must still be good for the digital world. No amount of behind the scenes pushing can make a bad book last.  It may sell but books especially in the digital world are sold by word of mouth and eventually the bad book falls. But if your book is good and you work hard then you at least have an equal chance as the big boys.

 

It is truly a different world out there.

 

www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher

 

After You Pass Page Eight Hundred...

You are on your own. Maybe you have something or maybe you have nothing. The book has gotten so big that there are parts you are not sure how they relate to the whole and still it doesn't end. You just keep going with the thought that the book must end somewhere and then what will that end look like? After all these pages will the end justify the commitment. Or will it just dribble out like a fire finally burning down to some coals and then smoting into night.

You don't know.  And in a sense you don't care. You just want to finish that first draft that is plowing along like the Titanic and creating such a wake that everything else is put on hold. After I finish the book. After I finish the book. Then I will deal with the world but of course the world has a nasty habit of pushing into your world anyway. Kids and dogs and schools will do that. So you carve off part of you to get the work done and each day you wonder if there is any gas left in the tank.

Because you have certainly burned through all sorts of reserves to the point you barely have anything left over for blogging or essays or anything. But your secret pride is that you tried it in the first place. That you took a shot and if it is just your great silent catastrophe...that is alright too.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

In Kindle Purgatory

I own all the electronic rights to my books and so it is my responsibility to get them  out there ready to go for the Kindle users. I had someone else do it for a while until I realized I was shooting myself in the foot by hurting my royalties. So I took it on and entered Kindle purgatory. You now have the words that have been hammered in stone in your books and have been fine thank you very much for years. But now you have to wake them up and explain you are putting them into a different format and would they please behave for people who want to zap e-books into their readers.

Words being words they don't behave. They rebel. Excited by being released after years of being stuck between two dusty covers and fading into pulpy yellow has beens the words now are juiced. They strut across the screen and jump around like Mexican jumping beans. Even the title gets in the act and shoots from one side to the other. The epigraph jumps ship altogether and the dedication is found hiding in the far right corner of the first chapter. The first chapter has mutinied and takes its' place in the back as CHAPTER ONE.

Others follow suit and everyone gets in the act. It is word riot! Think London in the last few days. All the words start rioting and looting. They jump pages, get into other words paragraphs. Chapters poach on other chapters and retaliate by changing the chapters font. Headings head for the hills and page numbers go on strike. There is even some new words who have decided on acrobatics for a living and come in sideways on the margins. The Authors Page goes vertical and decides it would rather march across several pages than being stuck in one lousy paragraph. Author Photo decides he never liked his position all that much and chooses a page for himself and turns black.

So like a cop I take off after my errant words and corral them and bluff them and bride them and kick them in their butts to get them back to their rightful place. Some words have gone hardcore and take no prisoners sticking to their margins or sides like pirates on a gold ship. I have no alternative but to nuke them and start over. They dont' go easy and make a lot of hell for everyone else with page recalibration. Finally I get everyone where they are supposed to be and we go for the conversion.

Most of the words make it, but a few slip by and the Chapter Headings do the rumba with some on the bottom of the page and some on the top. I push everyone around with billy club and we do it again and most of the headings get in line and even the epigraph is fairly centered. I torch the unrepentant Author Page for a web link which like the new guy on the block is very responsive and respectful and does what he is told. The words grumble and show up for work on time and I let them out into cyberspace on the promise they will behave.

Then I turn to the next book and let the inmates out again. Of course they go crazy.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man Paperback and Download

Rocket Man First Chapter

The Catcher in the Rye for the fortysomethings. Not quite boomers, five years old during Woodstock, missed the sixties revolution and ended up being mellow in the seventies, partied in the eighties, floated in the nineties, then lost it all in the Great Recession. Welcome to the world of Rocket Man.