I've paid as high as 14.99, 9.99 is highest I usually go for DRM'd ebooks when I've not been waiting for it for some significant length of time, 12.99 would be acceptable for a DRM free ebook.
Though as Konrath has shown the lower ends of the 70% price range seems to be where the money is (I'm not 100% sure I buy ALL books by an author being 2.99 makes sense, the first in a series certainly but not so sure about the rest of one...)
We're both businessmen so you know I'm saying this absolutely without rancor: I have no desire to ever do business at those price points.
Edit: Oh, you want to see me marketing a fiction ebook. Sorry, I misunderstood: I thought you wanted me to write a novel-length ebook about marketing. Disregard what I just said.
Sorry about that, since you mentioned an interest in fiction writing I figured that would be understood.
As to the other idea, yeah that would be utterly laughable unless you saw it as a way to expand your contract work, which gets away from the whole 'making money while you sleep' idea in the end.
And trust me, honesty is best especially in a community like this. Though your comment makes me think, Amazon not differentiating between fiction and non-fiction for their revenue sharing in ebooks limits how many people will want to direct sell books on topics where the book should sell for a significant chunk of change through their site. Hmmm interesting.
Be curious if they change the rules there at some point or if it simply is not worth their time, since right now it's fairly low maintenance unless they decide to remove a book for some reason.
I don't think Amazon's 30% is hostile to higher priced books directly. A book that costs 20% as much, but sells five times as many, ends up paying the same fee to Amazon.
I think the difference is that higher volume, mass market books benefit more from being on Amazon. While a specialized and pricey book won't sell to random people browsing Amazon. So Amazon is offering less value for the same price.
I think it'd be hard for Amazon to change the rules. What are they doing to do? Lower the commission on the first 500 copies you sell? That would hurt them with the people selling unpopular books who would sell nothing at all without Amazon's help. And it would annoy popular authors who are like, "Why should my rate go up the better I do?"
Lower the commission on books over a certain price? That will cause price distortion (books near the price will increase their price), and it's in opposition to Amazon's general approach to things (sell high volume cheaply). If you change the commission gradually over a range of prices, that has the downside of making the rules more complicated which most customers don't like.
Except they already create artificial prices due to difference in % by price. 2.99 to 9.99 is 70%, everything else is I believe 35%.
This makes a MASSIVE difference in the high cost books (stuff like the marketing book point that started me down the train of thought). I understand why Amazon did it with their desire to keep people selling fiction at 9.99 and under for impulse purchases, but that model doesn't make sense for other forms of writing.
It's potentially dangerous for Amazon to do this. They are essentially squeezing their suppliers in the same way Walmart does, which could potentially make room for a competitor to target the higher price-points.
The more Amazon squeezes, the more high-quality authors such a competitor could get exclusive deals with. Once that happens, Amazon has lost something really important: the fact that you never have to go elsewhere.
Potentially true but at least B&N has fallen in line with their PubIt! platform for indie authors on the Nook. Exact same pricing structure to revenue sharing %s. And last I knew B&N is the only thing even CLOSE to competition for the Kindle store right now, and even it is way behind.
iBooks isn't even a blip last I heard. After all you can just read kindle and nook books on your iPad. Selection is crap too so most people I've ever asked don't even look these days it seems like.
I'm beginning to wonder if it'd make sense to reset to 70% for say anything from 49.99 and up. Fiction books aren't likely to go after that price range, but educational/informative books can be reasonably priced there, working mostly like things do now while still letting amazon try to keep fiction priced at impulse purchase prices.
