So the question of how much to sell my book for is a pretty constant one among indie writers. We don’t want to devalue our work, but we don’t want people to think we’re gouging them, either. We don’t want to race for the bottom, but we want to find the sweet spot for pricing that maximizes revenue and doesn’t leave any sales on the table. Some folks do very well with a $4.95 price point, some folks do well with a $2.99 price point, and some folks are moving a ton of books at $.99 each. If you read a bunch of indie writer blogs, all this pricing hoo-ha will be old news to you and you’re probably tired of hearing us whine about how hard it is to figure out where to price our books. I can almost hear some of you now – “just put a price on it and get it out there! The market will figure itself out!” But it won’t. Since I am the market, I need to figure out at what price point my books will maximize my revenue.

So let’s look at the different pricing tiers. I’m going to use Amazon numbers, but the rest of the sites are close. For an ebook of $.99 (the minimum price you can set on Amazon) to $2.98, the royalty tier is 35%. That means that if I sell a book for $.99, I get $.35. Not much, right? But it’s actually pretty good in the publishing world, where royalties typically hover in the 8-15% range.

Some months ago, Amazon introduced a 70% royalty tier (I think it was after Apple did the same thing, but I didn’t have any books out when this happened, so I might be wrong about the cause & effect). For books priced between $2.99 and $9.99, the author gets 70% of the sale price. This is HUGE. This means that for an ebook that sells for $2.99, the author gets $2.00! I know, still doesn’t sound like much money, but it’s close to what that author would make on a $25 hardcover in the traditional publishing world.

So this lead to a bunch of authors who were selling books at $.99 or $1.99 moving their prices up a hair. And it set a line in the sand for some people mentally who thought that anything under $2.99 was “devaluing” your work, because the writer was on a lower royalty tier. This thinking has been shifting for a while, as more authors play with pricing and find success at different levels. One theory that seems popular is to price the first book of a series at a lower intro price,to get the readers hooked on a series, then go to the higher royalty rate with the subsequent books.

Since I happen to be working on a series, I kinda love this idea. Hard Day’s Knight has been floating along selling about one book per day for a while now, not really gaining much momentum but not losing me anything either. But since Back in Black (I’ve dropped the Blue) is almost ready for release, I decided to do a little tweaking. So yesterday, with no fanfare, no FB messages, no blog or message board posts, nothing to announce the change, I dropped the price of Hard Day’s Knight to $.99.

And sold 8 copies. Now I need to sell 6x as many copies at $.99 as I was selling at $2.99 to make the same money, because my royalty is so much lower. But if I can continue to sell 8x as many copies, and it can serve as a lead in for the other books in the series, then we might have something. And really, even if I sell 6x the number of copies and stay revenue-stagnant, the book is getting out there more and I can develop a wider fan base.

So if you haven’t bought your copy of HDK yet, now’s a good day.

Because I shot myself in it!

Well, not me, really. But another independent author has been garnering all sorts of attention, and not the good kind, for her response to a review her book received. Apparently the book was given an unfavorable review, and the author took to her blog. Now that’s one thing, and I’m certainly in the “it’s your blog, write whatever you want camp.” But the author named names, and called the reviewer unprofessional and took exception to the fact that her review was not objective.

There are a couple of things here that are not good for the author. First, reviews kinda have to be subjective! They are the opinion of the reviewer, not fact. For example, The Chosen is 206 pages in paperback, that is an objective statement. Were I to say that The Chosen “is an example of all that is good and joyous in fiction,” that would be a subjective statement. Fortunately, I don’t have to say that – a reviewer already did!

But that is her subjective opinion, and while I happen to agree with her, I can’t change the fact that her review is subjective, as are they all.

The bigger faux pas that the author made in this case, and I am going to avoid bringing any further embarrassment down on her by not linking to her post, is that she went after the reviewers personally. This is beyond unprofessional, which is oddly enough one of the things that the author accused the reviewer of being, it is also brutally stupid.

Most people that review books on the Internet do it because they love to read, they might get a few free books out of the deal, but they give their time away in exchange. And for this writer to bite the hand that feeds her not only screws her with this book and this reviewer, but also screws her for future books and a bunch of other reviewers.

I’ve gotten a lot of reviews in my life, mostly in theatre. Of course the good ones make you feel great and the bad ones sting, but you just have to suck it up and move on. You can’t go around bashing reviewers because they give you a bad review. It’s kinda like trying to have sex with a jackrabbit – you end up frustrated, and the jackrabbit gets pissed off.

Before I get to dead birds, I just found out that my book, The Chosen, is featured on Spalding’s Racket today! If you don’t know Nick, you should check out his blog. He highlights indie authors, is an indie author, and has a fantastic snarky sense of humor! Check out his book, Life…with no Breaks, when you need a good laugh!

Now, about my albatross. The one that’s been hanging around my neck all week, I mean. I’ve finished my short story for the Twelve Worlds anthology that the inimitable Derek J. Canyon is putting together. The anthology will be out sometime in late spring and will feature a dozen short stories from self-published authors, as well as a few extra stories from previously unpublished writers. It’s also for a good cause, as all proceeds from the sale of the book will go to charity. I’ll post up more info as it develops, but I think it will be a cool thing. I wrote a Black Knight Chronicles story, a short adventure set before the events in Hard Day’s Knight, so I hope that people who enjoyed that book will pick up the anthology and get some stand-alone back story for our boys. There’s certainly nothing in there that is required reading for anyone’s understanding of the universe, it’ll just add a little color for the folks that read it.

I’ve been reading Side Jobs, which is a collection of stories from the world of The Dresden Files, and it’s really good. Of course, by reading in this case I mean listening to while I drive, but that’s how I’ve “read” the last four or five Dresden books, so that’s just my M.O. for those novels. I signed up with Audible forever ago, and for $15/month I get one free audiobook. And as much as I drive, I love it. All of these stories are similar to what I tried to do for the anthology, a separate story that doesn’t impact the continuity of the universe, but allows for a little depth into something that I haven’t yet explored in the main storyline. Of course, since I’ve written two books as opposed to Butcher’s dozen or so Dresden novels, it was a little easier for me. But I turned it in at around 5,000 words, which is a nice length for a short story.

Now on to the next thing – I think I’m going to work on Return to Eden Volume 1. I posted the first chapter here a week or so ago, and I think I want to spend some time with those kids and see what I can make of their story. I need to pump a little more immediacy into it, or at least get ready for a big conflict soon. I’ll keep you posted. I have no idea how long this one is going to be, but if it runs like most of my stuff, in that 60K range, I’ll be ready with a first draft of it some time in late March or early April. Depends on how the prep work for Back in Black (and Blue) goes.

I fly to Wisconsin tomorrow for work, because the baby Jesus hates me and wants me to be cold. I just hope all my flights are ok from the weather they got earlier this week, and I can get there on time. Wish me luck!

It’s 10:30 on a Friday night and I’m just beginning to catch my breath. This was a long week, and it looks to be followed by another one of the same. I’ve been to Atlanta, Durham, Raleigh and Winston-Salem this week, and next week sees me in Madison, WI, Atlanta and Columbus, GA and then eventually back to Charlotte. Then I think I’m home for most of a week before RoundCon in Columbia, SC, which will be a nice little semi-vacation. More to the point, I’ll be working, but I’ll be working for me and not for The Man.

Although, I guess since I’m middle management, I’m the epitome of The Man most days. Oh well, it is what it is. I’m getting through the first round of edits on Back in Black (and Blue) and March is still looking good for a release date. Gotta get to work on a cover, though. Might try something radically different with this cover. I love the covers Lindsay has made for me, but they might not be the best covers as far as marketability, and the whole point is to sell books, after all. So I’m gonna look at some things. I can always change the cover later.

The Win a Kindle/Nook/Gift Card contest is getting a lot of entrants, but not a lot of people are emailing me book receipts or trivia question answers, so I’m not sure how effective it is as a sales tool. But it’s getting my name out there, and anything that increases my name recognition doesn’t hurt at this point. Joe Konrath had a really interesting post on his blog a while back about book tours and signings and things like that. Basically he said that now that he’s self-pubbing, his writing is making him enough money to stay home and write. And since he’s doing most of his business through e-books, it’s better for him financially to not do as many cons and appearances, and stay home and get the next book out. This makes sense, especially if you’re as prolific as Joe (and I hope to one day be), but I’m likely to continue doing as many cons and book fairs as I can for a while, simply because I really enjoy them. I like meeting people and talking to them about my book. I’m sure eventually the gild will come off that lily and I’ll want to stay home and write, but for now I’ll be behind a table every chance I get signing books.

Speaking of books, we’re at 8 books sold 4 days into the month, so why don’t you go to Amazon and put me into double digits already?

I missed a deadline this morning. Well, I probably haven’t really missed it until tonight, and there is a slightly less than zero percent chance that I can create a short story out of whole cloth between now and the time I go to sleep. Except for the fact that I’m at work, which interferes with my writing. It’s considered somewhat untoward for the manager to be working on his fiction writing while at work. We’re not going to talk about my blogging while working, because it doesn’t take as long. And because we’re not going to talk about it.

Just got some interesting news, though. The 2012 Democratic National Convention will be coming to Charlotte, which is good news for the day job. You see, I sell theatrical lighting equipment. And news crews use a lot of lighting. And so do event companies. And two things that flood into a town during a big political convention are event companies and news crews, so that looks like next summer will provide a nice little bump in sales for us.Nothing huge, but a decent bump is better than nothing, which is what we would have gotten if the convention had gone to St. Louis.

On the writing front, I’m getting the first proofreading bits of Back in Black (and Blue) back, so I think we’ll be all systems go to have that ready in March. I just stocked up on Hard Day’s Knight and The Chosen to have copies at RoundCon in a couple of weeks, so if you’re gonna be around Columbia, SC come by and say hello. I’ve also been featured on a couple of cool websites lately, including Fang-Tastic Books and No Trees Harmed. Please go visit these folks and thank them for supporting your favorite independent author!