Either my IQ is particularly low today or there are some grammatical errors in that article and it's not 100% correct. First of all let me say that I wouldn't normally post on here but I am an author on amazon too (try Lazlo Ferran) and although my book Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate has been selling well on Kindle over the last few months at 99 cents, I recently felt the market would stand an increase to decided to try it at 2.99 dollars. Disaster! Only sold 1 in the last 7 days so this article really interested me. However I read it several times and clicked through to the blog post referred to and found that the book The List is NOT written by John Locke, as the slashdot article implies but by Joe Konrath who also goes under the name of Jack Kilborn and his book is not ranked 35 but more like 27th in the Kindle store which is quite a different thing to the Amazon top 100 paid rankings (although I will give him the benefit of artistic license in the way this is written).
So assuming that they are not the same guy just doing some devious self-promotion and conning slashdot into the bargain, he does make some interesting points. The main problem I have with 99 cent kindles though is that, as somebody else has stated, people will buy it whether they seriously intend to read it or not and I would judge that in my case, most probably don't cos I haven't had many reviews at all and almost no other feedback. So although I might go on selling at this price for another year or two while writing my next book, if those people don't feel a personal investment in the project and at least READ the thing, then there is no chance of a snowball effect - the 'curve' will just be flat. For this reason alone a higher price has to be sought and a way of selling them. I like the idea that maybe 1.99 dollars might be a good cut off point although I think I would prefer the this 'golden, sweet-scented pause' even if I lose a large percentage of potential purchasers if the people who DO go on to buy feel that they have taken a risk and therefore they will want to at least give the book a good go. So I think I will try a price of about 2.15 dollars.
Slashdot Mirror
Either my IQ is particularly low today or there are some grammatical errors in that article and it's not 100% correct. First of all let me say that I wouldn't normally post on here but I am an author on amazon too (try Lazlo Ferran) and although my book Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate has been selling well on Kindle over the last few months at 99 cents, I recently felt the market would stand an increase to decided to try it at 2.99 dollars. Disaster! Only sold 1 in the last 7 days so this article really interested me. However I read it several times and clicked through to the blog post referred to and found that the book The List is NOT written by John Locke, as the slashdot article implies but by Joe Konrath who also goes under the name of Jack Kilborn and his book is not ranked 35 but more like 27th in the Kindle store which is quite a different thing to the Amazon top 100 paid rankings (although I will give him the benefit of artistic license in the way this is written).
So assuming that they are not the same guy just doing some devious self-promotion and conning slashdot into the bargain, he does make some interesting points. The main problem I have with 99 cent kindles though is that, as somebody else has stated, people will buy it whether they seriously intend to read it or not and I would judge that in my case, most probably don't cos I haven't had many reviews at all and almost no other feedback. So although I might go on selling at this price for another year or two while writing my next book, if those people don't feel a personal investment in the project and at least READ the thing, then there is no chance of a snowball effect - the 'curve' will just be flat. For this reason alone a higher price has to be sought and a way of selling them. I like the idea that maybe 1.99 dollars might be a good cut off point although I think I would prefer the this 'golden, sweet-scented pause' even if I lose a large percentage of potential purchasers if the people who DO go on to buy feel that they have taken a risk and therefore they will want to at least give the book a good go. So I think I will try a price of about 2.15 dollars.