E-Books and Pricing -- is $99.99 Okay?

Honestly, I would not ever pay $100 on an ebook.

If a hardcover book costs $100, it is most likely some high-quality scientific book that was never printed in great volume. I would pay that price because there was no alternative and MANY people recommended it to me.

For ebooks however, there is no such thing as low-volume hardcover prints. Unless you write the very best book on this whole planet, I would not be able to justify shelling out $100 for an ebook.

$100 is the price you pay for Microsoft Office or Microsoft Windows, because there is no alternative and it took hundreds of people several years to build it. $100 is the price you pay for two brand-new blockbuster video games that both took hundreds of people dozens of months to make. $100 is not the price to pay for what one writer has done in a year or so. At least not to me, I'm sorry.

Ebook marketing:

1) claim an outrageous selling price

2) receive a ton of exposure because of the outrageous price

3) on publish date, take back price to 1/3 of the original price "special deal"

4) the mindshare was set at $99 so when potential leads now compare it to the special $29 price, the new price feels like great value

Basically, he was able to turn an outrageous price into marketing, and is now able to sell his book for a normal price in higher quantities because people will compare the normal price to the higher original price (and this effect is multiplied since he blogged about it like this, unlike regular "BUT WAIT, order now and get 30% off!" promotions). That, and the extra exposure can't hurt either.

A interesting conundrum. His book is 'worth' nearly $0 if he's an unpublished author. His strategy is weak because he's trying to hit a home run at his first at bat while learning the game. His understanding of the economics involved is very weak because not only does he not know how to price his book he states "You have to have a good editor and some good, knowledgeable friends who are willing to severely criticize your work." So he doesn't recognize (or perhaps he does but hasn't internalized it) the value that is brought to the book by the editor (who quite reasonably might want a cut, just like the back up band gets paid if they help you do an album :-)

I suspect he may end up bitter and disillusioned if he is not careful.

A 'healthy' way to work this would be to write the equivalent of articles on the areas that he is a subject matter expert in, that are short 1500 - 2500 words. Something that can help him develop his writing voice and let him seek out and evaluate the effectiveness of various authors. Self publish these for free or a modest sum (like $0.99). The goal of this stage is to build up an understanding of what it will take to actually write your books.

Next once he has some experience and a good set of tools take take the top 10 articles he self published and organize them with a greater structure and updated to the current standards as a 'composition' book. This, if he has any audience at all, he can sell for $3 - $5. Surprisingly to some, but people will buy his articles again when they are put into this format. (magazines do this all the time they sell 'best of' books from magazine articles). He will also pick up new readers by word of mouth with other folks.

Not guaranteed of course, he may find that his writing is not well received. But the whole "I'm writing my first {e-}book, I wonder what I should charge for it?" question is backwards, the real question is "What is a book I write worth to the public?"

The key to pricing: "Know your Market"

The cost of producing the object (Fixed, or marginal) being sold isn't particularly relevant to what you should price it at.

For example, check out this dandy PDF Report: "The Networked EV: The Convergence of Smart Grids and Electric Vehicles" [1]

Single License: $2995

Price to maximize long term profit. In some cases, you may want to build your readership by reducing the profit on the current sale - but, for a solid agile development book, presuming it is solid, $99 is a "friction free" price for most agile managers - they won't hesitate to buy it if it's a best of breed. Those that would hesitate at $99 would probably think twice at $50 as well, so there isn't a heck of a lot of incentive to drop your price down that far. If anything, would have probably suggested something like $129, but $99 probably gets the job done.

Anything below $50 is silly, because at a certain point, your audience starts to think you're offering a lower quality product, and you start to _lose_ readership.

[1] http://www.gtmresearch.com/report/the-networked-ev-smart-gri...

$100 is way too high, I think. Two sides of the coin:

-

Sell it for $100:

1) X number of people will buy it, but it probably won't be that many.

-

Sell it for $0.99:

1) Many people will buy it

2) Many people will know your name & become interested in your work and future work

3) You'll gather a much bigger following, transfer this to Twitter, Facebook, etc.

4) When your next ebook comes out, all the people who liked this one will buy the next one in addition to new people, meaning second e-book sales will be much higher (if this one is successful)

5) Lots of sales = possibility of speaking engagements, further validating you in your field.

6) You might make less money (I'm guessing you'd make more this way), but you make so much more in other benefits.

The benefits for not selling at $99 just seem too high to me. I'd rather have 10,000 people read my book at $0.99 than 100 people read my book at $99. I'd even rather 5,000 people read it at $0.99 (making half the money), because that means you have 5,000 more people interested in what you do for your next ebook.

Good luck!

Maybe it's worth that, but it's also likely that there are N other books promising agile goodness for much less.

That said, you can always drop the price later, at the risk of pissing off a few people who already bought it.

I'm interested to see how it goes, I think the ebook space is fascinating (and at this point have something of a vested interest myself: http://www.liberwriter.com ).

"2) If you pay that much you're more likely to pay attention to what I say"

I have a treadmill and a gym membership that beg to differ.

"3) Each sale is more of a significant event for both the author and the reader, ie, if you don't like it you're more likely to complain, which is a good thing"

I don't get it... I should pay more to ensure that I complain if it's bad?

If you overprice your product, you can always lower it later and it will seem like a bargain. It's much harder to go the other direction.

Asking "what's an ebook cost" is too wide a scope. It's like asking "what's a physical item cost?" It's unsurprising to find a large range. When you narrow the search, you find established values. Digitized classics go for $0.99. Novels are about $9. Textbooks are similar to their dead-tree counterparts, at $60+. Serious reference works can be thousands.

Run of the mill technical books clock in in the $20 to $40 range. I'd aim for that, and go high or low within there. And as a new author covering a widely-known process like agile, (opposed to the landmark work on a popular language), low would probably be best.

How much the book saves a business is immaterial. If it's a truly academic, novel work, you might justify a premium. As it is, you're hardly the only person writing about agile.

You're asking this question to a bunch of developers - whom many I'm guessing are all about open source... I'm expecting standard response to be NO. Sometimes it is more about the recognition of your name which may lead to better and bigger things.

no it is not.