Starbucks vs the used bookstore

[elf]

Dean Wesley Smith, whose blog I love, has a post about ebook prices, in which he reposts a comment about how low ebook prices are bad; discerning customers believe anything priced at $.99 is crap, and besides, authors should be willing to think of their short-story ebooks like a Starbucks coffee: $5 gets you 15 minutes of entertainment. (Starbucks has physical substance, but the ebook can be read again, and in some cases, loaned out; it pretty much balances.)

While I can understand their points, I disagree with some of their conclusions because I think they're missing some of the factors involved in ebook purchases. I made a comment which was long enough (and borderline-ranty enough) that I'm reposting it here:

I have a reader's perspective, not a writer's. While I want the writers I enjoy to make enough money to keep writing, I am also sharply aware that no writer anywhere--no small pool of writers anywhere--is going to keep up with my reading rate, so I need to ration my book purchases.

I'll buy Starbucks-priced ebooks, a few bucks for 15 minutes of reading pleasure... occasionally. I have to already believe I'll like it, which means not wasting that money on an author I haven't read before. (While I will buy coffee or a sandwich from a place I haven't bought from before, if it turns out bad, I won't buy anything from that place again. In the case of ebooks, this means boycotting a publisher or subgenre, and certainly not buying a second book by that author.) I have a cap on fiction: Baen charges $6 for ebooks, so when I see a book that costs more than that, I ask myself, "would I enjoy this more than one of the Baen books I haven't purchased yet?" So far, the answer is always no. I don't buy fiction ebooks that cost more than $6. (Nonfic, my current highest cost is $30. I don't have a price cap for nonfic.)

I am not happy with the movement to shift ebook prices upward, because I remember being poor. I bought a lot of three-for-a-dollar used books. There are no three-per-dollar ebooks; Amazon's pricing setup has killed that market. The drive away from $1-$3 ebooks is something I watch carefully.

I wonder about the future of literary culture... my daughters can't legally buy ebooks, because they can't legally agree to the contracts necessary to have accounts at ebook stores. So they read freebies, and whatever I hand them that fits their tastes. (They read fanfic. I've attempted to buy them ebooks; the results weren't promising and I stopped.) They are avid readers... but they're not learning the habits that will set them up to be avid *buyers* when they have money of their own. If the ebook market stabilizes at "Freebie - all levels of quality (because there will always be freebies of random quality); $1 - self-indulgent crap and first-draft short stories; $3 - a few decent shorts and promo novels, but mostly more crap; $5 and up - good stories"... they'll never make the jump from freebies to paid ebooks. They'll look at the paid market, buy one or two things, get burned by a novel that looked good but was either a bad story, or badly formatted, or just not to their tastes, and decide that paying for books is too risky.

There is an *endless* supply of free content to read. Some of it is *excellent* content. While I can respect authors who decide that the $1 customer is not of interest to them, I hope that enough decide that those customers *are* their demographic of choice, that the future of ebooks doesn't have a large schism between "those who pay for content" and "those who read promo freebies, fanfic, public domain & creative commons works and disdain even looking at anything with a price tag."

The $1-$3 ebook niche is the market for the used-bookstore customer. Is the college student on a budget. Those are longtime avid readers who usually didn't pay royalties... now there's a way to get them to pay directly to the authors. They're willing to wade through piles of books they're not interested in, of random quality levels, to find what they like. But if there's nothing in their price range, they'll find freebies to read, or shift to other media.

Ebooks aren't just competing with print books; they're competing with Tumblr. I don't want indie authors to fall into the trap the big publishing houses are building for themselves, believing they are in the "book" industry instead of the "entertainment and information" industry.

Comments

[snottygrrl]

well said ::nods::

[elialshadowpine]

Most of the authors I know are in the romance sector, but many of them who are self-pubbing are very fond of the free/99c price range. They usually do it for short stories or novellas and then offer longer work at a higher price. But I generally won't buy a self-pub author at more than 4.99 unless it's someone who has really won me over (and it had better be freaking long for that price range). `

[elf]

Interestingly, the comments at Dean's blog say that erotica is about the only genre where short stories have mostly (or at least commonly) shifted up to $2.99 each.

I won't spend more than $3 on an unknown author. I have, a few times; I got disappointed once or twice, and decided it's no longer worth the risk. It's not like I'm short on things to read.

[elialshadowpine]

Romance and erotica, while somewhat related, actually work very differently. Romance readers tend to read voraciously; locally, my used bookstores are full of romance novels and the booksellers say that they have many regulars who come in each week and trade in for a new set of books they haven't read. I'm not surprised this is basically translating to the free/99c thing.

*has perhaps been reading a few too many small business blogs*

[thejeopardymaze]

It sucks, but he's not without a point, depending on what a business is selling or providing services for they can get more money with less customers by selling a more expensive product, depending on the circumstances-and to be honest, if I were to open a business I would not be selling cheap items because of that.

Whether it's actually worth the price, it depends, which is why I think there needs to be regulations on what qualifies as "artisan", a much abused term in the food and cosmetics industries.

Re: *has perhaps been reading a few too many small business blogs*

[elf]

His logic is sound, although I believe he's ignoring some data. From a business perspective, it makes sense. From an artist's perspective, it's got some problems--you sell art to the people who love it, not the people who will pay your price-of-choice; art doesn't sell unless you've found a market that enjoys your art.

It depends on how much the writer perceives his/her books as like, oh, decorated coffee cups, and has decided not to sell theirs at the dollar store anymore because they think their etched-glass versions are worth more than that. On the one hand, yes, if you spent four months or a year writing your masterpiece, it's worth more than a couple of bucks. On the other... digital is a whole. different. landscape.

People will pay $12 for the etched-glass coffee cup because, among other things, they can show it off to friends who visit and serve their coffee in it. When they change their kitchen motif from roses to trains, they can sell it off or give it away. They can hand it down to their kids.

The $4 short story... I'm not supposed to lend it to my kid's best friend and say, "read this and let your mind bend around the concepts therein." I can't resell it when I'm done. I'm not sure if my kids can legally inherit it. (The whole issue of "digital purchases" is still in legal limbo.)

Would I pay $4 for a short story, something less than 40,000 words long? I dunno. Maybe. I'd have to believe I was going to love it. Do I think it's a reasonable metaphor for ebook pricing? Hm.

If they want to compare their works to Starbucks coffee, they'll need to be braced for their work being *treated* like Starbucks coffee... "sure, I enjoyed that for ten minutes, but I don't care about the people who brought it to me, and once I got a bad cup from the store on 8th Street, so I never buy from there anymore. Who wrote it? I don't remember. I know I like That Guy With The Dreadlocks; he makes a terrific mocha, but I don't know who makes my lattes in the morning and it's never the same person."

We don't give awards for "Best Starbuck's Mocha Of The Year." If ebooks are supposed to be *disposable* entertainment, priced to draw one's impulse-novelty-buy money, that's very different from treating them as works of art that are sometimes expensive and sometimes cheap-to-free, wherein the quality is not remotely connected to the price.