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This is in general response to another post. These are guidelines that I use and it has served me well.
The advent of the e-reader has brought to it a lot of good and some bad. The good is that a lot of authors have been able to publish without going through big publishers. Another good thing is that people can enjoy books in niche genres like TG fiction and zombie romances.
There is also an influx of extremely short pieces. People have turned blogs into books. You see stories as short as, and this is no lie, 2 pages. The big issue that is going around is pricing. How much do you charge for a work.
These are the guidelines I use, but there are no hard and fast rules
Fiction stories under 50 pages should be priced around .99 cents. The issue authors have with that is that if you charge under 2.99 you only get 35% royalties instead of 70%. It is a downer, but that's kind of the margin. My 99 cent books are the following along with number of pages.
The Dress Punishment: 19 pages ... extremely short but I mention word count for the story alone in the description.
The Cure: 127 pages
The Wishing blanket 34 pages
The Stranger at the table 41 pages
My shortest book for 2.99 is The Long Ride home at 52 pages and that is probably going to drop to the 99 cents range pretty soon.
With the amount of free books and bargain books (99 cents) on Amazon, most people are looking for value. They are also looking for something that is edited and well thought out and executed. I recently read a book (will not name names) where at least 10 percent of the words were spelled wrong, the author swapped briefly from second to first person, and the main character's name changed in the middle of the story only to return to the original name for the last two paragraphs.
It is great that author's get to sell on Amazon. I for one am appreciative. But there is always going to be a backlash if pricing doesn't meet expectations. If you spent 50 dollars on a copper engraving of the Emancipating Father, Abraham Lincoln, think how upset you would be when a penny came in the mail.
Comments
Question:
I have returned books before, not anyone on BCTS, for not living up to hype. If some one does that, does that take the royalties away from the author?
yes
Yes it does. Returning books means an author doesn't get paid. It happens a lot on shorter works too, and erotica, and not always for the right reason. There is a growing trend called "Read and Return" because Amazon gives people 7 days to return a title. I could read pretty much anything in 7 days. Of course, you do it too often and Amazon will block your account.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
Amazon returns
No we don't get the royalty.
I've also heard there is a stigma against .99 books at Amazon. I have one such book. It's not selling. Actually I sold more copies of it at a higher price. KL thought it was overpriced I have a new story even shorter than that one that just needs some polishing and a proofread before publishing but I'm holding it at the moment because I just don't know if it will sell.
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
no stigma - just a patern
There is no stigma against 99 cent books, just a pattern. I noticed that some books of mine that were short priced higher than 99 cents got returned much quicker. On the flip side, I noticed when I priced The Transsexual and the Cross at 99 cents it didn't sell at all.
The issue with 99 cents books is a tricky one. A lot of people (and this is not just the trans community) sit down and smash the keyboards and go straight to publishing. They price low because their "Books" really aren't worth anything. Then there is the thing as perceived value. I get people bitching at me on other message boards for pricing my books at 4.99 and not 7.99 or 9.99.
In the end, it goes to whatever works for you. In the end, it all gets figured out. I like 4.99 myself for novels. Most of my 4.99 books sell well. But I couldn't bring myself to charge 4.99 for something 20-30 pages. I tried briefly to charge 2.99 for the Dress Punishment and suffered for it in returns. In the end, it is net sales that count.
Also, please note that a lot of these things are my opinion and are hard and fast rules and I don't mean them as attacks. The more successful transgender fiction writers there are, the better for me, because I will eventually get my sales. If I say I feel something is priced higher than it should, that is my observation and that is without seeing any numbers. I don't know how many you sell (though I can get a reasonable guess from rankings). I usually offer advice that I think will help, and mean it in good spirit and with an eye on your success.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
This and that
I haven't had many returns. In two months of bookselling I can count them on both hands and have fingers left over. 7 or 8 is the total I think and I know 3 of them were of my first $2.99 book which is 30,000 plus words in length.
I can't sell a 20-30 page book for $4.99 either. For one thing- I don't think many readers would be willing to pay that much for so little.
Daniel, author of maid, whore, bimbo, and sissy free TG fiction since 2000
What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.- Oscar Levant
Kindle Unlimited question
Now the Amazon has started Kindle Unlimited I have been able to afford to read most all of your stories beyond those that were bought before the option was available. That has been a god send to me at least.
My question is have you been able to make more $$ by putting most of your works in the Unlimited bucket?
With any luck Unlimited will work out well for you and others that are able to capture more readers.
Charlie O