{"id":5377,"date":"2011-07-04T01:12:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-04T07:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=5377"},"modified":"2011-07-04T01:13:15","modified_gmt":"2011-07-04T07:13:15","slug":"arrrgh-smashwords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/arrrgh-smashwords\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrrgh Smashwords!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>So I go to upload “From the Ice Incarnate” to Smashwords as a free give away, and this is what I see. Arrgh!\u00a0 Why do I have to wait??\u00a0 Why can’t my book be up nowww…?<\/p>\n

Okay, seriously, it’s not that big of a deal.\u00a0 I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to start spamming everyone<\/del> sharing it.\u00a0 And unlike last week, I’m going to be more open about the fact that I’m giving this story away for free.<\/p>\n

I decided last week to put up “Decision LZ1527<\/a>” and “Memoirs of a Snowflake<\/a>” for free on Smashwords, mostly to see if I could get Amazon to price match.\u00a0 So far it hasn’t worked, but it has given me some very interesting insight into the minds of ebook buyers.<\/p>\n

The results aren’t scientific, of course, but so far it’s confirmed what I’ve heard elsewhere: that there’s a HUGE difference between people willing to pay more than $1 for an ebook, and people who will grab anything because it’s free.\u00a0 So far, 62 people have downloaded “Decision LZ1527,” 33 people have downloaded “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” but only 2 people this week downloaded the free sample of Genesis Earth–<\/em>and no one<\/em> has bought a copy.<\/p>\n

Of course, this is only after one week.\u00a0 Perhaps the people who downloaded the free stories are just taking a long time to read them.\u00a0 Perhaps they just can’t afford to buy many ebooks right now, but because they read and enjoyed my stories, they’ll check it out when they have more time\/money.\u00a0 Maybe some of them will run across my ebooks years later and remember “oh hey, that’s the guy with that crazy sci fi dating story” and check me out then.\u00a0 Or maybe they’re all cheapskates who only read stuff they can get for free.\u00a0 I don’t know.<\/p>\n

But I don’t think it’s the last one.\u00a0 A friend from my apartment complex walked up to me today and told me he’d read and enjoyed my story.\u00a0 It was pretty cool.\u00a0 That’s what I’m really after at this point: exposure and readers.\u00a0 So I think it’s a good idea to give at least some stuff away for free, even if it doesn’t push people to buy your other books in the short term.<\/p>\n

Speaking of which, I’ve tried out something else new: raising the price of Genesis Earth<\/em> from $2.99 to $3.85.\u00a0 Why in the heck would I do that?\u00a0 Mostly because of value perception; I want people to know that I have confidence that my book is worth at least #3.85, that I believe they’ll feel it was worth what they paid for.\u00a0 The kind of books I want to write are the kind that people will want to read twice, and I want to see if changing the price to reflect that will build the kind of readership that is looking for that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

I might be totally wrong, of course, but hey it’s worth a shot.\u00a0 I’ve sold two copies so far this month, so at least it hasn’t totally killed sales.\u00a0 I’ll probably keep it at that price for at least a couple of weeks, just to see what happens.<\/p>\n

But I can tell you one thing I don’t think I’ll ever do: price a novel higher than $5.\u00a0 I’ve always thought that $6.99 and $7.99 for a paperback is a little steep, even if the book completely changes my life.\u00a0 That’s not something you can put a dollar value on, and even if you could, why would you want to charge that much?\u00a0 If your book was so deep and meaningful, wouldn’t you want to give it away for free?<\/p>\n

So yeah, I’m trying to suck my readers dry, only to find a business model that works.\u00a0 And if you think $3.85 is too steep, please let me know.\u00a0 I’d like to give my books away for free, but at the same time, I want to eat without spending my life as a wage slave.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out my free stories<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I go to upload “From the Ice Incarnate” to Smashwords as a free give away, and this is what I see. Arrgh!\u00a0 Why do I have to wait??\u00a0 Why can’t my book be up nowww…? Okay, seriously, it’s not that big of a deal.\u00a0 I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to start spamming… Continue reading Arrrgh Smashwords!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,170],"tags":[89,560,515,395,542,555,599],"class_list":["post-5377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ge","category-short-stories","tag-career-decisions","tag-ebook-pricing","tag-ebooks","tag-money","tag-pricing","tag-promotion","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1oJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5377"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5392,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5377\/revisions\/5392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}