Author Spotlight: Guest Post and Kindle Give Away by Scott Nicholson

Today I have a special treat.  I have a guest post from author Scott Nicholson.  I'm sure you've seen other posts from him around the blogosphere.  Please welcome Scott to Teresa's Reading Corner...

E-book prices
By Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com

I’ve had a few people ask me about e-book prices and what happens when the author is setting the price.

Actually, for the most part, it’s Amazon setting the price, at least for indie authors. You can’t upload your book for less than 99 cents, and if you want to earn 70 percent royalties, it must be at least $2.99. That earns the author two bucks per book, which is fantastic—nearly on par with what bestselling authors make on hardcover sales. So most authors are happy with that price range, and so are the readers, though a lemon turns up every now and then if you don’t sample before you buy.

Major publishers are still running their books up to the $14.99 level, though more and more seem to be falling in the $8-to-$10 range that Amazon originally envisioned. While outlets likes Barnes & Noble and Smashwords let you give your book away, I’ve yet to hear of many success stories from authors doing that—unless they have significant lines of product to sell. In other words, giving away free books to give away more books in the future is a terrible business model.

I believe that will change as e-books move to sponsorships and content ads, and giving away the book will be the name of the game—such deals will likely be measured by the number of downloads. But some think this will never happen. I’ve learned to never say “never” in the digital age, because most predictions look silly six months or a year later.

Does 99 cents lead to impulse buys? Some cheap books are getting hoarded and may never be read, but I think the same is true of free books. I downloaded a handful of free e-books to read on the Kindle for PC, mostly because they were “real books” usually listed at $8 or so, and I thought I was getting a good deal. Except the part where I realized I wouldn’t read them even if they were free, because time is worth more than money.

If someone is specifically looking for an author’s book, they will probably pay a reasonable amount of money for it. If they are looking for books in similar genres, they may consider price. If they are going around and gobbling up 99 cent books, they probably aren’t paying too much attention to what they are buying. After all, when you can get 10 indies for the price of one “major publisher” book, it’s probably worth the risk. Chances are you’ll find two or three as good as the $10 book.

In my own case, I like to have a mix of 99 centers, and a body of work at $2.99 and $3.99. That means I earn more per book than when I was published in mass-market paperback, and readers have a variety of entry points to my work. I sell a lot more of the cheaper ones, and that suggests those readers aren’t all moving up to the higher prices yet, but we’ll see. This era is still new and raw and experimental.

Readers and writers, for the first time in history, get to sort out the prices on their own, just between them. With a little nudge from Amazon, of course.

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Scott Nicholson is author of 12 novels, including the YA paranormal romance October Girls and the thrillers Disintegration, As I Die Lying, Speed Dating with the Dead, Drummer Boy, Forever Never Ends, The Skull Ring, Burial to Follow, and They Hunger. His revised novels for the U.K. Kindle are Creative Spirit, Troubled, and Solom. He’s also written four comic series, six screenplays, and more than 60 short stories. His story collections include Ashes, Curtains, The First, Murdermouth: Zombie Bits, and Flowers.

To be eligible for the Kindle DX or Kindle 3, simply post a comment below with contact info. Feel free to debate and discuss the topic, but you will only be entered once per blog. I’m also giving away a Kindle 3 through the tour newsletter and a Pandora’s Box of free e-books to a follower of “hauntedcomputer” on Twitter. Thanks for playing. Complete details at http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/blogtour.htm