When it comes to e-book sales, price can matter a great deal. PaidContent takes a look at the case of The Black Echo by Michael Connelly, a 1992 novel that has suddenly shot to the top of the Kindle and Nook bestseller charts. After the publisher dropped its price from $7.99 to 99 cents at the end of June, it went from the mid-three-digits up to #2 on the Nook and Kindle bestseller charts, and #13 on Kobo’s.
PaidContent calls this an example of “big six” agency-model publishers beginning to experiment with running sales on their books.
The effect of a price drop on The Black Echo‘s sales rank should be good news for Hachette—and for other publishers of long-running series. They, like Hachette, can pull in new fans by putting the first book in a series on sale. Hopefully, readers will get hooked and buy the rest of the books in the series—that’s 16, in the case of Michael Connelly—at full price.
While first-book sales and giveaways are good, they don’t do much for revenue for that particular book, just the rest of the books in the series. It would be nice to see publishers looking at pricing more recent books more reasonably, too. Amazon knew what it was doing with its $9.99 “hardcover” price, which was at least partly responsible for the explosion in new Kindle owners.
The tease didn’t work for me in this case, but a similar very low price offer for one of Ann Patchett’s books led to me buying three more of her books at the regular ebook price this summer. I am inclined to do this sort of thing when I read a good review of a new book but hesitate to spend that much money without being sure I like the author. In the past, I would get something by the author from the library. Now I will buy something for less than $5 or $6 first before biting on the full priced new book.
I follow a very heavily used “what are you reading” thread on the Amazon Kindle forum and can’t begin to tell you the number of people on there who are now reading their way thru all of Michael Connelly because of the above promotional price. I am kind of jealous since I have already read all of Connelly’s so can’t take advantage of this one. I can attest that for myself, I found Julia Spencer Fleming, Deanna Raybourn and many others because their first book or two was discounted. The greatest of these may be Mick Herron whom I had never heard of until I read the one and then went through all of them.
I would argue your contention that ‘you don’t do much revenue for that particular book’. I’d rather sell 10,000 copies at .99 than many less copies at 6.99. I write romance. Romance readers are the most prolific in the industry, and thus always looking for bargains. Most can’t or won’t pay high prices to try new authors, when so many are entering the market all the time. I will not buy an ebook at 6.99 or up, unless that author is on my auto-buy list. I have 3 authors on that list. The rest of the books ‘now available’ in ebook at those prices? Nope, sorry. And I’m typical of the romance market. Cathryn Cade https://www.cathryncade.com
It’s back to $7.59. {sigh}