Amazon Kindle Pricing Change

Posted on June 22, 2010 by James Ashman

There is a new change to give authors a leg on Amazon Kindle. A little history: The reason authors priced low was to compete in the market. It was the lowest price. There was no incentive to price higher, to charge the value of the work, because no one would take a second look if it were priced higher than another author’s cheap work.

That was why $0.99 ruled. And it sucked, because that means you only got $0.30 per book sold. If you were a full time writer, making a measly 30k per year, that’s you selling 100k books a year! Just to make a living! As much as we write for the love of it, that kind of pricing harms authors. It also is detrimental to the indie market as a whole, since it established $0.99 as the only price to pay for a indie book.

I really view $2.99 and up giving the %70 royalty as correcting an injustice. $2.99 and a %70 royalty is what the standards should have always been. It just took a while to implement. And lets face it: you’d have to sell 100,000 books on kindle per year at $.99 a piece to make $30k annually. Now, you only need to sell 15,000 at $2.99, which is actually doable. If it had been this way from the beginning, this question wouldn’t even arise since it would have been the norm. However, the only way for $2.99 to work is for most people to jump on board. It should become the new minimum for full-length novels. Personally, I have one at 2.99 and another at .99, just so there is a cheap option to be seen in the market, and then a higher price for my much longer, and much more serious works. I usually look at books from a “time to read” standpoint when it comes to personal pricing, but that doesn’t mean a shorter book cannot be worth more than a longer one. Equal content, length matters. Different content, length doesn’t matter as much.

Any cheaper than $2.99 now doesn’t give the %70 royalty. That’s fine because at prices lower than that, the additional costs of the e-book, the invisible ones, aren’t as well covered overall. Amazon gives everyone free 3G – that costs them money. They do have a business to run. If they only made $0.30 on each $0.99 book sold, would it cover the cost of the bandwidth used by that book + all the additional business behind it? Just as things weren’t really fair to authors, it isn’t fair to the company as well.

Everyone deserves to make a living doing what they love to do. It isn’t charity work. Yes, it is what we love to do, and only want to do. This makes it more feasible. That’s why everyone should expect good indie books to start at $2.99 – it’s a step towards making indie authorship worthwhile.

Note this is only one method. It’s not the only one, and for some reason there are probably those that would disagree with the entire thing. I personally think that doing what you love for a living would be the best way of life. I know that doesn’t fit in with the industrial world all that much, but it sure sounds nice. Besides, aren’t there people that want to do all the jobs that some of us hate, those are their loves in life, the things they want to do? Let them do what they love, let me do what I love. Let me produce something and actually derive benefit from its worth.

They are a corporation, and ultimately looking out for themselves, but right now Amazon seems to realize that by just taking a small % of each sale, they can improve their business by empowering individuals. They make money helping other people make money. It’s amazing. Hopefully it keeps going in the right direction. There is always the possibility of change. For now, this pricing change is good. Expect, enjoy the fact that indie kindle books will start at $2.99. If it isn’t good, there is a refund anyways!

677 words I could have used in a novel.

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Helping without helping

Posted on June 21, 2010 by James Ashman

Help often comes in tangible ways. But just as prevalent is the kind of help given where nothing tangible is given or received. It’s felt. Emotional help, lending a listening ear, and just telling someone: “You’re doing it right”, can have amazing effects. It doesn’t need to be anything more than that, and it’s helpful. It doesn’t need to include money, suggesstions, critique, or even physical presence.

Helping someone doesn’t mean anything physical or tangible. You have helped someone when they feel you have helped. That’s it. Ain’t it great?

97 words I could have used in a novel.

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Communication is a powerful thing

Posted on June 20, 2010 by James Ashman

Whether it’s children, friends, readers, spouses, communication is a fundamental part of human interaction. In an era where self-publishing is rising, the internet is ubiquitous, and the social world is being stitched together, there is more interaction among people off all kinds.

That’s pretty powerful stuff.

It is important for an author because an author sells themselves. They are their own brand (even though some people abuse that word, a brand is just another word for identity), and thus when someone buys and subsequently enjoys their work, they may fans of that person.

So with that thought, and knowing todays interconnected world, what about communication? It’s now personal. I have a blog post where an author found it and commented on it. That’s personal interaction with someone, a single individual, who has read their work. I found out that the top review on Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, is in fact written by the author himself! He personally talks about his book, and responds to certain items, and also explains a bit about his work. That’s another form of communication: addressing an audience in a completely different setting than usual.

It’s all quite amazing what’s happening. And as communication with everyone of every level becomes easier, it also becomes more important. Use it, and it’ll become even more important to a small author that can now hand-craft their own small audience.

239 words I could have used in a novel.

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Comment on the intelligence of publishers

Posted on June 16, 2010 by James Ashman

First, this is a comment to this post on the self-pub review. Go read it first.

Generally, it’s about how contracts with publishers are now written to last as long as an author is selling, a version of indentured servitude locking an author into a contract that won’t be as beneficial as contracts of the past that didn’t recognize digital rights. Imagine that a book sells only 20 copies in a quarter. A traditional, hardcover only publisher would consider that a failure and probably let the author take their rights if that happened. However, what about $100 worth of sales of an ebook which has no production cost? That’s pure profit, and worth continuing since there is zero production cost. Simple as that.

The argument is correct. Most companies are very smart at “getting money now.” Whether that benefits them in the long run is another story. And it may even benefit them indefinitely, but be against the customer’s wishes. As an example, think of AT&T’s iPhone lock-in. It’s terrible, and even dumb, to limit customers to AT&T. But it’s incredibly good at making money, which in the business world equals smart.

I actually think a lot of business decisions made against public opinion are smart from a business standpoint, the publishers included. But only in the aspect that it will benefit them, not us. If I were running a company, I’d do it differently since my view is different, I want the customer to benefit while keeping me in business. I only need enough money to stay in business and expand enough to meet the needs of a growing customer base. Business doesn’t exist to make straight profit. It’s an economic cycle that keeps the world moving. Yes, some people make 30k per year, others make 2 million per year, but in reality they are both the same since they are both consumers. They both spend. There is no reason to keep tons of money, since money’s best use is to be spent. Debt is an entirely different, and possibly abominable matter, that isn’t suited for this comment.

It’s true that publishers are smart. To fight against e-books is actually a good idea when it comes to profit margins, if it could succeed. However, it won’t succeed, and that’s why it isn’t.

It’s fortunate they have been taken so long to realize this. If they had realized it earlier, the self-publishing movement might not have the same backing that it does now. A lot of authors are seeing the ability to set their own profit margins, to interact with customers on a new level, and to reap individual rewards that are unfiltered. %70 royalty doesn’t exist in traditional publishing. If I submitted my book to a publisher, they picked it up, and made zero changes to it before distributing it, I’d be astounded at why I would go through them in the first place. Distribution is the key. Publishers still control that, and they are smart enough to lock authors into their own distribution models. The freedom of the business doesn’t seem to be in line with the freedom of the artist. Maybe, business will figure it out and change. Or die, which seems to be happening now.

542 words I could have used in a novel.

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Friction in Fiction

Posted on June 14, 2010 by James Ashman

There is a post on Ars Technica about the nature of friction. I found it interesting, but it raised some good questions. What exactly would it take to move two surfaces against each other without friction being created?

And I’m not going to ponder it. Look, Together with Silver is fantasy, mostly, though there are no fantasy-only elements. No magic or other unexplainable stuff. On the surface it’s fantasy, but my personal explanations for each thing in all the books is pure sci-fi. It’s an interesting twist, but one I take pride in. However, that does mean some things have to be taken at face value.

Slipstone is a material in my books that is frictionless when in contact with other pieces of slipstone. End of story. The only real caveats to it are that slipstone can be manipulated by heating, melted, etc., and that it is not frictionless when in a solid form with itself. A rock of pure slipstone is still a solid object. Once it’s split, then each piece will slip off each other. Of course, it’s impossible under our current understandings to explain how it works. It’s possible, based on the Ars article, that frictionless objects might not even be possible. But sci-fi and fantasy have always had an intermingling. Rayguns, traveling through wormholes, weird aliens, etc.

So my friction is fiction. But it makes for a great story.

240 words I could have used in a novel.

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