
The rise of the 99-cent Kindle e-book - iuguy
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20037800-82.html
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pstack
An actual book written to be sold at a dollar isn't expected to be much. In
fact, I would assume any book written _for_ that price point is probably one
of those scammy "Send me $20 for a PDF all about being a video game wizard!"
website type of books.

However, for content that would otherwise be languishing, it can be a terrific
move.

Like Jerry Pournelle said, 70% is a hell of a lot more than you ever get from
a publisher. Hell, 30% is a hell of a lot more than you ever get. Ten percent
(what you'd get from a publisher) on a $20 book is going to get an author a
couple bucks. On Kindle, they could sell it for $3 and still make more money.

And at a buck or three, you're more likely to pick up more spontaneous sales
and they can add up to ten or even a hundred thousand sales, pretty fast. If
you are smart enough to have included a rights-reversion in your contract,
it's a good way to make some additional income on what might otherwise be
forgotten and ignored.

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wccrawford
I'm a lot more willing to pay $1 for a book than $3, especially for an unknown
author and a book that has a description that doesn't say much about the
actual book. (Not talking about this author, but in general.) And more than $3
would never happen.

Amazon might actually be doing them a favor by their $2.99 policy, too. It
forces everyone to sell for more, keeping the playing field up. If they had
the same policy for $.99 items, many authors would just drop the prices and a
new floor would be set... And some would drop lower to try to generate sales,
just like this guy did.

~~~
iuguy
I think the 99c price point provides a lower level of risk, especially when
the book is in the charts. You don't know whether or not you'll like the book.
At $12.99 you may as well go to a bookshop not to buy the book but to try a
few pages. At $2.99 you might be put off by the book's price because you don't
know the author, but the risk is fairly low. At 99c the book is going to cost
less than a newspaper.

If all books were 99c I'd definitely jump. At that point you're seriously
disrupting print media to the point where future generations would refer to
this period as a dark age.

~~~
wewyor
Amazon offers samples of books before you buy (usually the first chapter, or
more if it is short) and that kind of solves the try a few pages problem.

I think most people just are more willing to fork over 99 cents for a mediocre
book rather than 8 dollars for a decent one.

I have a kindle but sadly prices aren't set for my market (the used papberback
shopper).

~~~
runevault
While you are probably right, I find it sad that people would rather read lots
of mediocre books than a few good ones. But maybe I just value my time more
than most people.

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adrianinaustin
my 6-year old just wrote/illustrated a 99 cent ebook for the kindle:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-little-Bunny-
ebook/dp/B004W3FYOS/r...](http://www.amazon.com/The-little-Bunny-
ebook/dp/B004W3FYOS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=books&qid=1303105060&sr=8-1)

~~~
steve19
Nice! How are sales?

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adrianinaustin
She has 3 sales (dad, uncle, friend) as of this morning! I think the hardest
part of self-publishing isn't the technical aspect of putting an ebook
together, or even creating the content. I think the hardest part is marketing.

~~~
steve19
ain't it always!

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niels_olson
I have been watching this ebook phenomenon with amazement. I bought 1 e-book:
Learning Python. I bought it through almost every store, to see where it works
best. Online, offline, laptop, tablet, desktop, phone. My favorite setup: ePub
from O'Reilly (no digital restrictions management) on Stanza (not a slave to
one store) on the iPad (works offline).

I spent a ton of money on that book, but I found out what works best for me.
And I stand to gain something at the end of reading that book. I can't imagine
reading contemporary novels when I haven't finished the classics yet. $1 for a
contemporary novel seems like I'm paying someone to take 20 hours off my life.
It's like whittling, only worse.

~~~
davidw
> $1 for a contemporary novel seems like I'm paying someone to take 20 hours
> off my life.

I am genuinely a bit confused by your comment. You're saying $1 is too much?
If you view reading 'contemporary novels' as a waste of time... well, don't!
You could read HN or watch TV or read lots of classics for free. It doesn't
seem like the price point is the problem, but that you just don't like that
kind of book.

~~~
niels_olson
Valid point, which I considered before posting. Here's what kicked me over the
edge: maybe somebody reading this is wondering "Am I missing something? Maybe
I should start reading $1 books." So I it adds value to the conversation to
know that there's somebody else out there who doesn't see value in this
category.

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silencio
I bought a John Locke book once just because of the 99 cent price. John Locke
is the pseudonym of the author behind most of the 99 cent Kindle top 20
bestsellers, and probably one of the few that makes 6 figure sales this way.

I read the entire novel hoping that the ending would make up for everything,
and in the end I just felt like that was a massive waste of my time and 99
cents. It was a mystery/thriller that ended up being so bad that I was
laughing the whole time at the absurdity of everything going on. It was rather
well edited, unlike most of the indie and 99 cent crowd, which was all it has
going for it. And this book and many others have nearly the same rating by
just as many customers as a traditionally published 1000 page behemoth like
_The Wise Man's Fear_ , which was (to me) worth every penny of the $15 ebook
price and many, many hours spent reading.

I love seeing markets being revolutionized and people self-publishing easily,
but the state of 99 cent ebooks today feels to me as bad as an iOS App Store
with all 99 cent fart apps as bestsellers would feel. There isn't much quality
or thought put into most of these, and the Angry Birds and Tiny Wings of the
ebook world are few and far in between. I can only wait and hope to see
improvement, instead of seeing more drivel being spewed out by the current set
of bestselling 99 cent authors all celebrating their six figure sales of their
godawful books.

~~~
jgroome
I hear what you're saying, but I think this experience shows a failure on the
part of the Reviews and Feedback section of the ebook store you used. Sure,
99c is a bargain price (and you're right, you think to yourself "what's 99c?")
but some books may only be worth 99c.

There are exceptions, I'm sure, but you get what you pay for.

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Ratufa
One of the things driving this is that e-publishing has lowered the entry
barrier for people who write "genre fiction". It's easier to get published and
put your work out where an audience can find it. By "genre fiction", I mean
stuff like military science fiction or vampire romances, etc, that has
emotional appeal to a fairly specific audience. In the days before
e-publishing, John Norman's Gor books would pretty obvious example of that
sort of niche-appeal content.

For this sort of fiction, "well-written" is less important than pushing the
right buttons (the plots are usually fairly predictable). To use an analogy,
the rise of e-publishing is similar to the rise of blogging, in that they both
allow for the easy production and consumption of targeted content (and
predictable button-pushing is the raison d'etre of many blogs, particularly
those discussing politics).

Note, I'm not claiming all e-publishing is genre-fiction or poorly written,
just like all blogs don't fall into the predictable button-pushing category.

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JonathanFields
Two more thoughts here:

1 - This is almost entirely a fiction phenomenon, at least for now. While
there are plenty of nonfiction books priced at 99 cents, the books on the
Kindle Top 100 are consistently all-fiction. Even bigger name nonfiction
authors who are traditionally or self-published, including NYT bestsellers,
are finding it near impossible to hit or stay on that list.

2 - Many of those self-pubbed fiction writers on the kindle top 100 list are
using the 99 cent price point for single books as points of entry or loss
leaders (though they're actually still making money) into a funnel for a much
bigger body of work. Amanda Hocking and J.A. Konrath experimented with
rotating certain books into the 99 cent slot knowing that once a reader likes
their style, fiction readers often attach to the author in a way nonfiction
readers dont. That fuels them to want to read the authors other books...for
$2.99 to $4.99. So one 99 cent book can lead to many more higher priced sales
and readers for life.

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larsberg
I can't speak to the other fiction categories, but there are a number of
readable books in the Kindle SciFi category in the 99-2.99 range. In
particular, if you just want to turn off your brain and pick up something in
the "space opera" category, it's an excellent release.

When I buy a 2.99 book, I'm not looking for the next Gibson novel. I'm just
looking for something that will let me put my brain in neutral that isn't
either beer or streaming video.

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wong
There's also Amazon singles from the low end. See -
[http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2486013011](http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2486013011)

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alecco
How far is this from web content supported by advertisement?

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maw
Maybe not entirely on-topic, but I'm very willing to pay a dollar or three for
a book in the public domain that hasn't had the Project Gutenberg treatment.

