Book marketing - prices and formats

[Vertigo]

Am I just too sensitive to these things?

I'm just running my periodic new book purchases and I have found a couple of disquieting books marketing issues;

1. Artifact Space by Miles Cameron - paperback is £7.21 and ebook £8.99. Now there has been much discussion around the pricing of ebooks and I can understand them being on a par with paperbacks, but more than them? No way! Also £8.99 for a not very well established author (based on GR ratings) is just too much anyway. I won't be buying the book no matter how good it is. I refuse on principle to be ripped off.

2. Activation Degradation by Marina J Lostetter. I loved her debut Noumenon books but this has been (incorrectly apparently) compared with Murderbot in the blurb and it seems the publishers figure they can therefore get away with Murderbot pricing: no ebook available according to Amazon, only audio and paperback with the paperback (384 pages) at £14.09. Again I refuse to be ripped off. Lostetter's Noumenon books were good but she's still only just getting established and I don't pay that sort of price for any of the established authors like Asher, Hamilton, Tchaikovsky, Bear, Weber etc. so why do they think I will pay that for this?

3. Finder by Suzanna Palmer. Whilst the paperback price is, in this case sensible £5.17, it is not available as an ebook; Audio, hardback and paperback only. Again I'm not buying this because I only read ebooks nowadays.

Is it just me or do each of these marketing/sales decisions seem just a little silly to others? Apart from the prices that's two relatively recently published books not being made available as ebooks. That to me is just crazy.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

When I look Lostetter up in the online sales directory I have (linked to a book wholesaler) it only shows as an ebook (not unusual as US books often don't show up). ditto with Palmer. So there is an e-version somewhere.

In terms of pricing. I think we devalued the cost of books over the past 15 years. Publishers allow supermarkets crazy discounts, and Amazon, and we've come to expect a book to be worth a fraction of what it really costs - and that means the author gets paid a pittance, and we're all broke, and we get less good books written. The indie shops don't get big discount, so they have to sell at RRP and they look crazy expensive.

I'm very much in favour of libraries and loaning as a means to bring prices down. But I genuinely think that the cost of five coffees is more useless than the cost of a single book that I will spend hours reading. I mean, most magazines these days are six quid and up and they get read in hardly any time.

 

[Vertigo]

When I look Lostetter up in the online sales directory I have (linked to a book wholesaler) it only shows as an ebook (not unusual as US books often don't show up). ditto with Palmer. So there is an e-version somewhere.

In terms of pricing. I think we devalued the cost of books over the past 15 years. Publishers allow supermarkets crazy discounts, and Amazon, and we've come to expect a book to be worth a fraction of what it really costs - and that means the author gets paid a pittance, and we're all broke, and we get less good books written. The indie shops don't get big discount, so they have to sell at RRP and they look crazy expensive.

I'm very much in favour of libraries and loaning as a means to bring prices down. But I genuinely think that the cost of five coffees is more useless than the cost of a single book that I will spend hours reading. I mean, most magazines these days are six quid and up and they get read in hardly any time.

When I dug a little deeper in Amazon on those two it says "This title is not currently available for purchase " for the ebooks. Very strange. I will dig further still...

On the price it's somehow not the absolute figure that upsets me, it's that I'm expected to pay twice as much for a book from a relatively unknown author as I'm paying for well established ones. To include other authors outside SF for whom I only pay half those sort of prices I can include the likes of Bernarnd Cornwell and Haruki Murakami. Why would I pay twice as much for lesser authors? And lets be honest it has always been the case that only a small percentage of authors make any kind of living from their books. I'm not saying that's fair but it's not going to change like this.

 

[HareBrain]

Why would I pay twice as much for lesser authors?

Just off the top of my head, maybe they know that author has an active but limited fanbase, who will be less price-sensitive, and they don't expect to sell many outside that fanbase anyway. The higher price means they cover more of their fixed overheads.

 

[Vertigo]

Just off the top of my head, maybe they know that author has an active but limited fanbase, who will be less price-sensitive, and they don't expect to sell many outside that fanbase anyway. The higher price means they cover more of their fixed overheads.

Well that won't make me a member of their fanbase!

Interestingly the Activation Degradation is available in the US as an ebook both ePub and Kindle but not in the UK and without a VPN that means I can't order it anyway!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@Vertigo has a real point, actually - one of the author income studies a few years ago found that the most badly damaged sector of authors by current pricing strategies are debut authors without fanbases.

 

[Vertigo]

@Vertigo has a real point, actually - one of the author income studies a few years ago found that the most badly damaged sector of authors by current pricing strategies are debut authors without fanbases.

Well it's not surprising to me. It's a whole other discussion about what's fair for the author, but if a new author is priced (per page) much more highly than established ones then I just resent it and won't buy. Actually it's not just to do with new authors. If an established author starts charging well above the approximate norm (for me that seems to be up to about £6 for up to around 400 pages) then I resent it equally as much and won't buy. It's really that simple. Martha Wells is a good example of that; she's well established, at least in the Fantasy genre, but I simply won't pay the price she (or her publisher) is charging for her Murderbot books.

I read around 70 books a year and at £6 a book that comes to around £420 a year. Yes I think it's better value than say the enjoyment I get from a £6 bottle of wine, for example, but still, that's a lot of money to lay out every year! And you must remember that with eBooks I don't actually technically own a single one of those books; I can recover none of the costs by selling them second hand.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Kinda disagree with you on your 2nd point Vertigo. Big, big authors will have print runs maybe in the hundreds of thousands, and have sales agreements with thousands of outlets, as well as hundreds of thousands - millions even of eager buyers in the public. They will have enormous economies of scale on both costs and sales. Hell, I bet a lot of them will be subsidised by big chains and supermarkets to draw people in as loss leaders for the retailers.

Small authors just can't compete with that. You're asking emerging authors to 'make losses on each sale till they can perform like Stephen King' essentially. Which will wipe out all independent publishers and virtually all new authors or those that can't sell millions, if taken to the logical conclusion.

Welcome to book publishing limited to what you'd get in Tescos.

From my understanding £14 for a small paperback run would be lucky to break even, even if everything was sold. (I don't know about print on demand economics)

 

[Vertigo]

Kinda disagree with you on your 2nd point Vertigo. Big, big authors will have print runs maybe in the hundreds of thousands, and have sales agreements with thousands of outlets, as well as hundreds of thousands - millions even of eager buyers in the public. They will have enormous economies of scale on both costs and sales. Hell, I bet a lot of them will be subsidised by big chains and supermarkets to draw people in as loss leaders for the retailers.

Small authors just can't compete with that. You're asking emerging authors to 'make losses on each sale till they can perform like Stephen King' essentially. Which will wipe out all independent publishers and virtually all new authors or those that can't sell millions, if taken to the logical conclusion.

Welcome to book publishing limited to what you'd get in Tescos.

From my understanding £14 for a small paperback run would be lucky to break even, even if everything was sold. (I don't know about print on demand economics)

This is one of the difficulties of the new world of publishing. Once upon a time the new author would get a publishing house who would, if they believed they were worth it, take a punt and probably expect to make a loss on the author's first book. So even though the author probably isn't paid much for that first book, at least they weren't expected to take on the financial risk of the typesetting and first print run. Not always the case, of course, as some first books go on to become best sellers (think of The Martian). Nowadays many new authors choose not to go through the traditional route and choose to self-publish. And, of course, most of them do not bother to publish hard copy at all in order to avoid those financial costs, and purely publish electronically. Which is perfectly understandable but it's sad that so many are not prepared to suffer the costs of professional editing either, as such typically poor editing as they do receive will also stop me reading that book and anything else from that author, regardless of how good the story might be.

This from a marketing point of view is problematical. When you see a new author published traditionally it is reasonable for the prospective reader to assume that some sort of filtering has taken place and this new author is, at least, not going to be terrible. But when they self publish there has been no such filtering and now the prospective reader must try and figure out which new authors are actually going to be any good. From my personal experience, and expense, significantly less that 10% of these self published authors are worth what you've paid or even the time taken to decide to abandon their work. Reviewing doesn't help much, as so much reviewing is now deeply suspect. So the end result is the reader now has to take a much bigger risk than previously and personally I will not take that kind of a risk along with a steep markup. I'm sorry if that's not sympathetic to the aspiring author, but I'm afraid I can't afford charity on that level.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Not all debut author models are expensive, or cut corners. The likes of the Joffe books model, where @Kerrybuchanan is published, is very good. (She'd be better placed than me to know how well an author does from it). Maybe sff are not quite there yet in terms of that bulk sale-low price emodel?

 

[Venusian Broon]

What you're willing to pay is entirely up to you vertigo, it's a market after all.

Personally I have a bunch of filters that guide me when looking for new fiction - too many to go through here (except one relevant to your diatribe - I will tend to avoid SP) but at moment price, especially if it appears to be an emerging author, after I've found something , is not an issue for me. It's that or Tom Clancy/Wilbur Smith world.

 

[The Big Peat]

First off, yes, the wild disparities in ebook prices drives me wild. And I know that publishing economics are mad, and that prices probably need to rise above the board - but that's the thing, across the board, not at random. I am not paying a fiver for a novella from Subterranean Press that I may or may not enjoy when I can get 3-5 full length books (some from authors I know I enjoy) through bargain hunting and sales. And if I was one of those authors selling for a fiver and not a productive machine that keeps churning stuff out, I'd be vexed about being one of those authors rather than being one of the authors who gets regular kindle sales to build a profile.

On a few particular points...

we get less good books written

Can't agree with this. There's never been more books published, the English language market has never cast its net wider for talent. The modern wave of talent isn't my thing but in terms of objective quality, it's a really good situation.

The only good books we lose are from authors who might have gone on to long careers in a different age but can't justify it in this one... and I don't think they tip the scales here.

And lets be honest it has always been the case that only a small percentage of authors make any kind of living from their books. I'm not saying that's fair but it's not going to change like this.

The percentage has shrunk. The mid-list has been hit hard. I'm not sure I disagree that this way is the wrong way forwards, but there is an underlying problem.

This from a marketing point of view is problematical. When you see a new author published traditionally it is reasonable for the prospective reader to assume that some sort of filtering has taken place and this new author is, at least, not going to be terrible. But when they self publish there has been no such filtering and now the prospective reader must try and figure out which new authors are actually going to be any good. From my personal experience, and expense, significantly less that 10% of these self published authors are worth what you've paid or even the time taken to decide to abandon their work. Reviewing doesn't help much, as so much reviewing is now deeply suspect. So the end result is the reader now has to take a much bigger risk than previously and personally I will not take that kind of a risk along with a steep markup. I'm sorry if that's not sympathetic to the aspiring author, but I'm afraid I can't afford charity on that level.

The vast majority of self-pub authors I've noticed are not selling at this sort of mark up.

Have you tried focusing mainly on the winners of self-pub awards to filter out?

Not all debut author models are expensive, or cut corners. The likes of the Joffe books model, where @Kerrybuchanan is published, is very good. (She'd be better placed than me to know how well an author does from it). Maybe sff are not quite there yet in terms of that bulk sale-low price emodel?

Plenty of SFF self-pubs doing this.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Peat - the mid list squeeze is what my fewer good books is directly about. Many many great authors sat in the mid list doing small but steady sales. They are one of the most damaged subsets by modern economies, partly because of how bookstores have been decimated by the dual squeeze of supermarket saccharine and Amazon discounts. That doesnt help writers, or readers.

 

[The Big Peat]

Peat - the mid list squeeze is what my fewer good books is directly about. Many many great authors sat in the mid list doing small but steady sales. They are one of the most damaged subsets by modern economies, partly because of how bookstores have been decimated by the dual squeeze of supermarket saccharine and Amazon discounts. That doesnt help writers, or readers.

But as I said, there's still far more books of an equal quality than I could ever hope to read. The mid list squeeze sucks for writers who end up there, and for aspiring writers who suspect they could end up there, and maybe it's not great for booksellers or casual readers, but as a plugged in reader who hears about the indies and small presses to be alive? There are overall more good books, and devalued book prices means I can try more of them. The current situation is hugely beneficial for me as a reader, even if it's gloomy as a would-be writer.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

But as I said, there's still far more books of an equal quality than I could ever hope to read. The mid list squeeze sucks for writers who end up there, and for aspiring writers who suspect they could end up there, and maybe it's not great for booksellers or casual readers, but as a plugged in reader who hears about the indies and small presses to be alive? There are overall more good books, and devalued book prices means I can try more of them. The current situation is hugely beneficial for me as a reader, even if it's gloomy as a would-be writer.

but where does it go in ten years time? We still have a mid list because of small presses - they are under more pressure than ever. ebooks aren’t the answer - too much content, too much choice and often not good. Ä

what we end up in is a world of bestsellers, often formulaic, and indie wonders, often great but only found by those clued in as too often hidden by the algorithms.

 

[The Big Peat]

but where does it go in ten years time? We still have a mid list because of small presses - they are under more pressure than ever. ebooks aren’t the answer - too much content, too much choice and often not good. Ä

what we end up in is a world of bestsellers, often formulaic, and indie wonders, often great but only found by those clued in as too often hidden by the algorithms.

Maybe. Maybe not. I'm no forecaster but what I do suspect to be true is that the market for books has never reacted fully rationally because it's sustained at all ends by people whose decisions don't make total financial sense but they just love books. And the love of books means people are always going to try and buck narrow markets. To look at a creative market that feels like it's already arrived at your predicted market, there were 403 new movies released in North America last year. Someone who watched a movie a day wouldn't be able to keep up. I suspect people will keep looking to preserve the width and creativity of the midlist from both ends and if they do, there's tools to make it work.

I'd also add that there was 481 books in Goodreads' can't wait SFF for 2020 list and 575 for 2021 list, 186 in Best Fantasy 2019... and at a quick glance, there's not much self-pub there. How many SFF books were getting published 30 years ago?

Maybe this is the apex of the wave and what goes up must come down. But it isn't coming down yet.

edit: Also I'd add that if we're talking midlisters - the possibility of authors who'd write loved series without being bestsellers, or taking time to emerge to become bestsellers, instead dropping careers after a few books - the internet can be helpful there as well being a bane. I'd suggest Aliette de Bodard, who I think is midlist in terms of rep and has just gone three years without a full length book from a major publisher (and only one novella) but who's kept getting sales, reviews, attention, and so on through a number of novellas either self-released or released though her agent. She's been able to use the internet to reach directly to her fans (I saw one author say that if you can find 30k people who want to buy all of your books you've got a good career, which isn't many you just need to find them) and keep in the game when maybe life would say otherwise.

Will every author be able to weaponise that? I dunno. But the tools can work for them as well as against them.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Peat - the mid list squeeze is what my fewer good books is directly about. Many many great authors sat in the mid list doing small but steady sales. They are one of the most damaged subsets by modern economies, partly because of how bookstores have been decimated by the dual squeeze of supermarket saccharine and Amazon discounts. That doesnt help writers, or readers.

Too true, alas.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

but where does it go in ten years time? We still have a mid list because of small presses - they are under more pressure than ever.

They are, and their times may be limited. Which is very bad news.

 

[Vertigo]

Have you tried focusing mainly on the winners of self-pub awards to filter out?

I find so many of the big pro awards so unreliable that I'm not a big follower of awards... period. I rely mainly on word of mouth; I've been using Goodreads for long enough now that there are a number of reviewers who I trust and when they recommend a self pub author I will take note. However I'm afraid this is quite a rare occurrence!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I wouldn't call Alliette de Bodard mid-list, I'd call her established. It's people like the @Stephen Palmer 's of this world, writing interesting books, well produced who will lose out in the future (those already established might do all right with internet sales etc, but they won't grow their readership). Those sort of books are swamped by other titles (often, as has been picked up, not well produced at all) online and are not easily available in hard copy.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm sad to see that. I read a lot of midlist authors and I like to support small presses who support that but the market squeeze means their discounts to book stores have come down and down, making it even harder to get into the mass market.

I won't bore forever, but the key factors behind this include

the ending of the net book agreement (a disaster for all consumers because it kept book prices down everywhere, rather than discounting only a few heavily in some places which means artificially inflating the price to ensure the publisher still something when selling at a heavy discount - which leaves the places that can't get those discounts forced to sell at that artificially high price, or to try to survive on really low margins, and still be more expensive)

shifting to central buying for chain bookstores. Gone are the day when your local Waterstones could choose their own books and champion what they love. It's centrally bought and supply these days, with up to 60% taken from a book for an indie book launch - unsurprisingly many indie authors can't sustain that.

shifting to algorithm led sales (this has also had a negative impact on, for instance, trilogies being completed) which have an algorithm that must be met or purchases are pulled. Since word of mouth builds slowly, those sort of building titles (where de Bodard does fall) are badly impacted as their availability is reduced based on early sales. A disaster for debuts and those quiet builds. Frankly, the best place to challenge that trend is #booktok, whose word of mouth vibe has really led to some books taking off and coming back in. Alice Oseman is a good eg of this, or Colleen Hoover.

the decimation of independent bookstores (mostly due to pricing differences). This is bad for readers, writers and users.

My feeling these days is, if price is a factor (and books are expensive) buy fewer books, pay the market price that pays the author, and borrow, borrow, borrow the remaining books you want to read from the library or buy the ebook. At least then people still get paid.