Stormsdream Journal & News

Journal: Price-point Versus Worth-point

keith@stormsdream.com (Keith Jones) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 14:58:00 PDT

Finally uploaded the improved formatting version of my electric books to Apple, which also means I finally increased the price to match what I had raised it to over at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Didn't feel right increasing the price before I could get the new files uploaded, which was an option. Price changes can be done through the website. Book files cannot. Go figure. So, there was a very narrow window in which the books were cheaper at Apple than elsewhere.

Still standing by my price increase; even though, I have found books in the $2.99 to $3.99 price range. Still makes me feel a little silly for going with $4.99, but screw it. I'm not jacking the price around. Electric books are still way too expensive. The vast majority of things I am actually interested in reading are still $9.99 or more. Whole thing still makes me freaking angry.

It's got nothing to do with supply and demand. The reason so many books are $9.99 is that is the Amazon pricing structure cut-off. Go above $9.99 and Amazon gets 70% of the price instead of 30%. This is also why you'll find so many $2.99 books. Go any lower and again Amazon takes 70%. The reason I'm pointing out Amazon's pricing structure is because most publishers want a consistent price across bookstores so if you're going to charge $9.99 at Amazon to stay within that 30% window then you're also going to charge $9.99 everywhere else. [...]

News: Updated Short Story ePub Files

keith@stormsdream.com (Keith Jones) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:42:00 PDT

Discovered there was something wrong with the ePub versions of my short stories. Calibre was giving me an error message when I tried to convert to other formats. I think I figured out what was wrong. Removed one line from the content.opf file in the ePub file. If that makes any sense. It has to do with the fact that an ePub file is actually a .zip archive with the file extension changed from .zip to .epub. It's why you need a program like Sigil in order to edit the .epub file. Well, you can probably open the .epub yourself simply by changing the extension back to .zip and unzipping it, but that's more annoying even than I want to deal with. Sigil is an awersome program, by the way. Calibre is awesome, too, by the way. It's just not an ePub editor.

Journal: Price-point Drop

keith@stormsdream.com (Keith Jones) — Wed, 20 Mar 2012 22:28:00 PDT

Oh, so of course I would find real electronic books for $2.99 right after going on a horribly profane rant about the cost of electric books. Say all kinds-of mean things about people I don't even know. Must be that poetic justice people are always going on about. Well, now I'm just more conflicted and confused. Brain explosion. Spontaneous combustion. All of that. Curse you, Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell! [...]

Journal: Price-point Dilemma

keith@stormsdream.com (Keith Jones) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:14:00 PDT

Electronic books are too freaking expensive. That's been my opinion for years, and I've had absolutely no reason to revise my estimation. In fact, if anything I've been too soft. This was seriously brought home to me recently when I started searching for electronic books to get and discovered that the vast majority of them are more expensive than the actual honest-to-god dead-tree paperback versions of the exact same books. What the fuck? I mean, really. What the fuck?

Sure, I know maybe just a little about the costs that go into a book, but the one thing I know for an absolute certainty is that electronic books don't have anything resembling the overhead that goes into their dead-tree brethren. In fact, they've got even less of an excuse to be so much more freaking expensive than the dead-tree versions because the pricing structure is far more favorable to the publisher. When you have to give slightly more than half the cover price to the bookstore, you have to charge a little more to cover your costs. However, when you get to keep more than two-thirds of the cover price, there is absolutely no reason to charge more than when you get less than half.

Makes me sick. Makes me physically ill. It's price gouging. It's taking advantage of the audience. It's not supply and demand. I'm sorry, it's not. You're not stuck with too much or too little inventory if you don't hit the pricing sweet-spot because there is no physical inventory to have too much or too little of. It's charging what the market will bear, pure and simple. It's the reason why books from famous authors cost more; even though, there is absolutely no fucking reason why the famous author needs more money. They're already fucking rich. The publisher is fucking rich. They could cut the price. No reason to charge so much just because the people will pay. I don't mean "can" pay; I mean "will" pay regardless of whether or not they "can" afford it. Have a heart you fucking rich bastards and be nice to your audience who don't necessarily have the disposable income to spend on your shit. You do realize that some of your audience are choosing your shit over things they need, right? They're not all as rich as you, you slime-coated, flee-infested, shit-encrusted leaches. [...]