Coelho Ebook Sales Jump 4,000% and 6,500% Thanks To $0.99 Sale

[gb18]

This should convince someone.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120504/06511518781/paulo-coelho-ebook-sales-jump...

[compulsiveread…]

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gb18 wrote:

This should convince someone.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20120504/06511518781/paulo-coelho-ebook-sales-jump...

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haha...reading the comments after the article...all those people nitpicking the math...LOL! Missing the whole point, imho. Hopefully those who need to be convinced aren't doing the same thing.

[DCLOVELL]

I hope publishers do take note.  About a year aog B&N had Joseph Finder's Vanished book for $0.99 or maybe $1.99.  (This is the first Nick Heller book by Finder.)  I bought it based on the cost.  I liked it so much I pre-ordered the next book at full price.

Offering people a deal can many times get them to pay a little more for a new book by an author.  Prior to this I had no clue who Joseph Finder was.

[keriflur]

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DCLOVELL wrote:

I hope publishers do take note.  About a year aog B&N had Joseph Finder's Vanished book for $0.99 or maybe $1.99.  (This is the first Nick Heller book by Finder.)  I bought it based on the cost.  I liked it so much I pre-ordered the next book at full price.

Offering people a deal can many times get them to pay a little more for a new book by an author.  Prior to this I had no clue who Joseph Finder was.

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Over the last couple of years I've seen a lot of promos like this - the pub takes an established series and makes the first book free, usually with bonus material for either the second book or the most recent book.  They basically use it as a hook for the rest of the series, and, for me at least, it works.

[DCLOVELL]

Over the last couple of years I've seen a lot of promos like this - the pub takes an established series and makes the first book free, usually with bonus material for either the second book or the most recent book.  They basically use it as a hook for the rest of the series, and, for me at least, it works.

Yes, works with me too.

[patgolfneb]

Certainly a good tactic for series or authors with a large catalogue of books. More importantly minimal risk for both sellers and consumers. If you don't like the book you are only out a small amount. If a reasonable number of readers buy additional titles that wouldn't have without the promotion it is a classic win win.

 The number of reissued titles, often from deceased authors, priced at 9.99 or more  would seem to indicate bigger name authors and their heirs don't feel they need to do this. I find this odd, they might reach a new audience and increase sales significantly with more aggressive pricing. I think fans would be more likely to buy e book versions of titles already owned in paper also.

[compulsiveread…]

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DCLOVELL wrote:

Over the last couple of years I've seen a lot of promos like this - the pub takes an established series and makes the first book free, usually with bonus material for either the second book or the most recent book.  They basically use it as a hook for the rest of the series, and, for me at least, it works.

Yes, works with me too.

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They haven't done this near as often with the big publishers since the Agency Model went into effect as they did before. There are several series that I picked up the first one free, then went on to purchase the rest of the series afterwards, such as Outlander series, The Wheel of Time series, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo series, to name my favorites. Anywhere from 3-10 books a series. That was BEFORE the Agency Model. Since the Agency Model, I still find a lot of new series and authors through  free introductions, but it is usually an indie author or smaller, non-agency model author. I went from purchasing mostly big publisher authors to buying mostly smaller pub and indie authors since then because they are more likely to give me the first book free and get me hooked.  If I read an ebook that I love, I'll buy the rest of the series no matter what the cost. It's getting the first one read that is the hurdle and those who offer me freebies usually get the rest of my dollars too!

[keriflur]

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patgolfneb wrote:

 The number of reissued titles, often from deceased authors, priced at 9.99 or more  would seem to indicate bigger name authors and their heirs don't feel they need to do this. I find this odd, they might reach a new audience and increase sales significantly with more aggressive pricing. I think fans would be more likely to buy e book versions of titles already owned in paper also.

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There's a big difference in cost between taking a book that was created through a digital process and sold as an ebook and/or printed via modern printing (which is now digital-based) and making it free, or taking a book for which there is no digital copy in existance and making it digital.

The publisher or other rights holder needs to take into account a number of economic factors here - how much it will cost to scan and clean up the file to prepare it for ebook conversion, the cost of the ebook conversion and further clean-up, etc., and how much they expect to gain in additional sales of other books.  While it would be nice for rights holders to give away the work even if it results in a loss for them, most rights holders are ultimately looking to make money, and if they want to even break even, they need to plan their pricing properly to do that.  Not every book will work as a sales generator for the rest of the backlist, and rights holders need to take that into account.

[patgolfneb]

Keriflur, I do know something about the costs for the type of conversions you are discussing. I was involved in two projects involving conversions. You are seriously overstating the difficulty and costs involved.  A publisher who had a reasonable volume  of conversions would contract this out for a  300-400 dollars per book.

[keriflur]

You don't consider $400 versus $0 a big difference?  And if there's 100 titles that's '$40,000 versus $0, so...

[patgolfneb]

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keriflur wrote:

You don't consider $400 versus $0 a big difference?  And if there's 100 titles that's '$40,000 versus $0, so...

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I do not have knowledge of when publishers started going digital. Businesses started in the 1970's when Wang dominated. I would be surprised if at least the larger houses weren't using in house publishing software by the mid 80's. This means that cost figure applies to books written more than 25 years ago or those with no electronic copies. Cost for anything on Wang or any other widely sold system would be less. This means that there are many books out of print released during that time that could be converted cheaply. Even an ebook that sells modestly, maybe 1000 copies a year might be worth this expense. I don't know the break even point on a new work, you tell me, but it has to be much higher than that.

[JudeH]

Thanks for sharing this article.

My guess is that the ebook market has a long ways to go before hitting maturity, so publishers will continue to "defend" the overall market prices until they understand where this is ultimately heading.

I won't be surprised if a few titans leap at better edeals for the mass market types of books.

When you can connect to free WIFI at an airport and buy/download the latest pop mysteries, nonfiction blockbusters, and romance novels, then we'll know we're getting there.

[Sun_Cat]

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JudeH wrote:

When you can connect to free WIFI at an airport and buy/download the latest pop mysteries, nonfiction blockbusters, and romance novels, then we'll know we're getting there.

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Not far off. I'm sure some airports already have free hotspots. And then there's this recent announcement (excerpt below):

If you buy Internet access through your cable provider, your subscription is about to get much more mobile.

Five of the nation's largest cable providers, including Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner Cable (TWC, Fortune 500), Cablevision (CVC, Fortune 500), Bright House and Cox, announced on Monday that they will allow customers of any of the other four services to use their free Wi-Fi hotspots when traveling outside their home network area.