What would you pay for a good Ebook?

Many of us think nothing of spending $10 to $15 per ticket to enjoy a movie for a couple hours. 

How about spending that amount on a book which will likely entertain you for many more hours?

As a discussion topic among authors, the pricing of ebooks is near the top of the list.

How much to sell an ebook for? After all, it has no paper, no physical materials that need to be considered in the cost. It's just text - mere words on a screen. Words don't cost anything, after all. Unless you put them into a book made of paper, such as a dictionary - or a novel. So the actual cost to a reader is only whatever time and skills were needed to put all those many words into a certain arrangement to tell a story or present other kinds of information.

So what is that time and skill set worth?

Time is, of course, worth at least "minimum wage" - currently $7.25 per hour. How many hours does it take to write, say, a 300 page novel? First rough draft? A thorough going-over of a subsequent draft? A full edit? The skill set necessary to write a book may be innate, may be pure talent from God, or it may be the result of years of training, probably at the cost of classes, tuition, and craft books read. More likely a combination. How do you put a price on that?

Some people may argue that the quality of the writing should determine the price. Or the length of the book. Both are true. Who would pay more for a book full of editing and formatting problems? (But what if the story is still compelling despite its technical issues?) It makes sense that if a 200-page book sells for $1.99 then a 400-page book should sell for $3.99 - unless the second 200 pages is not very interesting, of course. Or is that latter portion of pages simply a risk the buyer must take?

How about a children's book then? The text may be rather rudimentary, nothing demanding a high level of education, no fancy $20 words. The writing may not be very sophisticated or require any research. It may, however, include graphics - which would bring an artist into the cost/price equation. However, even a true "chapter book" (and most adult books, as well) has certain elements which must be considered in pricing, such as:

The plot. Where does a story come from? How does a writer invent such things? How does a writer arrange the telling of the story to create suspense, conflict, humor, tension, resolution, denouement? It's all imagination, right? And imagination is like ...air: it's free to everyone. So why pay someone for his or her imagination? Thanks, author, but it's not like you really did any work, no heavy lifting; you just thought for a while.

Characterization. Every story is told not by an author but by an invented person. Such characters may be based on real people or totally made-up, or be a combination. Does the real person who originated a fictional character get any share of the price? If a character is based on a real person then it's not actually invented, hence, it should be free. Right?

Action and dialog. Fist fights and car chases, the stuff of excitement, of entertainment. We can see them for free on television anyway. And in the greater scheme of writing, dialog is also considered action, just as much as a fist fight or a car chase. If the author overhears two people talking, say, at a Starbucks one afternoon, and writes that conversation as part of the story, do those speakers get a well-deserved portion of the price? What if the author changes some of that original conversation?

Setting. Sometimes it's the first, sometimes the last thing we think of in a story. Surely some stories would not exist if they were placed in a different setting, a different time and place. If the author went to such a place and looked around to get a feel for the landscape, the mood of the city, to see the way the cliffs actually crumbled down into the sea that our fictional hero must dive into - is that part of the cost? Is it the same, cost-wise, as attending a professional conference to perhaps hear what other authors have to say about writing?

Editing. Finally, we have something a bit more tangible in regard to the pricing of an ebook. Someone is actually hired to read and fix whatever problems may exist in the text, whether large such as organization or continuity, or small such as correcting typos or a grammar glitch. It's nothing against the author when something needs to be corrected - unless the author is also acting as editor. However, when a second person is employed, there is a real cost to be factored into the pricing of the book, even an ebook.

Artwork. Children's books rely on art but so do adult books, even ebooks. They all have a cover and most have cover art. It seems the cover does provide value to the story itself. People do judge a book by its cover. Many a book has been purchased, I would guess, because of the attractive cover. Therefore, authors have always been advised to pay well for competent artists to create enticing images to attract readers. More costs to factor in!

In the final analysis, we can easily see that there are actual costs for the editor and the artist which must be accounted for in what the author spends on producing the book. The author is due something, as well. The publishing venue, such as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, may also have criteria the author must follow when determining the price of an ebook. But how much? In the marketing business, selling a high volume of a product will usually cause its price to be reduced. Cost savings. Simple supply and demand, right? However, in the book business, well-known authors begin with high prices. Lesser known authors begin with lower prices. And some ebook sites will actually raise the price if there is more demand for a book, completely defeating the principles I learned in Economics 101.

Questions still abound.

How much do you think an ebook should cost? Does it matter what genre it is? How about the length? Does the first few pages (usually available for preview) determine the price for the whole book? Should the use of graphics in the book (number and quality of images) affect the price?

What if the author used an expensive marketing service? Would that warrant a higher price? Would you accept a higher price if you knew the author employed an editor, artist, and a marketing service? Does the cover art matter for ebooks? for the price of ebooks?

Would you pay more for a well-known author’s ebook? Should the price of an ebook correlate to the day of the week, the month, or the holiday season in which it is launched? What is the highest price you have paid for an ebook? What is the highest price you are willing to pay for an ebook, and what conditions would be necessary for you to pay that higher price?

Authors want to know. We want to provide the best value for your dollar but we also want to feed our children. (Sure, most authors have day jobs for feeding the children but the principle still applies.) There is a fair price in there somewhere. 

Please share your thoughts.

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 (C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Censorship and a confusion of sexy words!

Once upon a time happens every half-year or so, it seems, when book retailers suddenly act insane and throw out a lot of books and their authors for no sensible reason. Panic attack!

Once again someone complaining about a self-published book of erotica caused a panic in the industry. The result? Of course the book in question was burned. Then other books of erotica were tossed. Then any book that was self-published was given the heave-ho. The "reasoning" seemed to be that because erotica is generally self-published that by association all self-published books are suspect. After all, there are no purveyors of "good taste" to filter the good erotica from the back alley variety.

• You can read about the scandal here.   
• And here (Telegraph.UK).   
• And on a lovely blog post.

Naturally, there was an uproar by self-published authors of all genre, not only erotica. Unfair, they claimed, that all self-published books were taken down from online retailers Kobo and W.H. Smith in the U.K. Sales are hard enough to come by without such negative publicity and removal from the sales venue, even if, as the retail entities were quick to explain, the books would eventually be made available again "as soon as possible." We know how that goes.

Sure, this could be seen as "par for the course"; we've been through this kind of mass censorship before. A few of my colleagues declare this is not censorship because retailers can sell whatever they wish to sell, and no one is forced to sell someone else's book, erotica or any other genre. That's true; they are in business, after all. And yet, "censorship" comes not in some political definition but as more common sense jargon. Those retailers chose to make products unavailable for sale based on a hot, rushed decision made from scantily clad evidence related to a particular slutty book. (So the story goes....)

They have that right, yet I would still call it censorship because their actions were because of the content of those books, hence touching upon freedom of speech--which, of course, has never really existed except in some limited, brief conditions. They determined that others should not have access to that content. Someone deciding that someone else cannot have something made by a further someone is censorship, regardless whether a government entity is responsible for it or a business. Said another way:

Joe won't let Mary read the book Terry wrote because Joe thinks the book is not suitable for Mary. Joe does not allow Mary, therefore, to judge Terry's book for herself. Thus, Mary does not get the experience of reading the book and Terry does not get the benefit of compensation for writing the book. Joe, however, gets the satisfaction of affecting control over both Mary's pleasure and Terry's livelihood. In the end, only Joe gets off cleanly...though in a dirty way.

Well, I was not personally inconvenienced by this latest incident. And it did not seem to raise as much of a storm as the previous episode did. Perhaps we self- and indie-published authors take it as the cost of doing business. The rush to judgment, casting the widest possible net to catch any and all who may have slipped in a clever double entendre or an innocent first kiss or the simple delight of a bodice-ripped heroines pining for manly men in Romance novels is the offending act. I noted in subsequent discussions online that erotica written by better known authors (e.g., E. L. James) and published by traditional publishers (the popular Fifty Shades series) was not thrown out.

That certainly smells like a double standard. Is traditionally published erotica more (or less) sexy than self-published erotica? Which is more dangerous? Are the fantasies of midnight novelists somehow less wholesome than those of 24/7 erotica authors who are promoted onto bestseller lists by big company marketing departments? And in the final analysis, isn't all erotica the same? Aren't there only a few basic moves and all the rest mere variations on what seems, practiced over millennia, to work best? Granted, there are "how-to" books which may offer some tricks and gimmicks to dress up the behavior of the undressed. Even so, one aroused person's trick is another aroused person's fetish. Right?

I've even dabbled in some nasty bits, but I tend to "keep it real"--plausible, that is. Nothing that is physically challenging for the more idealistic acrobats of the bedroom--or, as the case might be, in a janitor's closet in a foodcourt restroom in a shopping mall...or whatever.* I tried using metaphors in my romantic adventure novel, AFTER ILIUM, but nobody figured out what was going on. Not good erotica, I suppose. Here's a sample from the big sex scene:

He continued collecting souvenirs as she directed him southward, showing him a lush garden of delicious, juicy fruit to sample, even daring him to taste the puckered kumquat. The festive banquet of Eden spread before him! Drowning in the sea of pleasure, she sighed, like the wind in the sails, and encouraged him to gather all the treasures that he could. He responded by lapping furiously at the fountain of youth, growing not younger but older, gaining maturity. And when he feared he might finally be satiated, she called for him to return to port, to push hard into the harbor until his vessel was fully docked and his wares completely unloaded. (p. 41)

It's all sailing terminology! What is so objectionable about that? Docking...harbor...unloading ware...?

So, in the end, everything remains the same: business as usual: you get what you pay for. Unless someone decides it's not worth your money. Granted, there are subjects, especially in erotica, which make me uncomfortable or disgusts me. I have a threshold. So I don't read them. I don't buy them. But I'm not about to set up a wall to keep people out. Their business is none of my business. Unless...?

On the other hand, I trust people--I want to trust that people are reasonable, that they don't like certain "filth" (rape, incest, abuse, etc., as alleged by the complaint) because of a desire to act out what they read, that they are not likely to be as bad as characters in fiction might be. Faith in humanity. Yes, we've been fooled before by people committing heinous crimes, but we must hold fast to the basic belief in the rightness of the majority of our neighbors. Or we stop being human. End of lecture.

Now, everyone please turn to Porn #69 in your hymnals....

*Did not really happen!

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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.