Where Time no longer justifies Cost.

How much is too much for an eBook? It’s the million dollar question.

Surely it’s a lot like anything else, the worth is in how much someone else is willing to pay for it.
 

That goes for property, services and goods of all description. If you happen to be in IT and charge a rate-per-hour, but the guy down the road is cheaper, it’s up to the customer to decide if your reputation warrants the extra cost, or whether the cheaper guy wearing a Jackaroo hat who rides into town on a horse is going to do a better job. You know he won’t, he’s a total cowboy but they don’t and might be willing to risk it. It would be the same if you were a painter, printer or plumber (or anything else not beginning with P.)

It’s no different with books. I’ve paid up to $30 hard cash for a print copy of an author I really like and I’ve also forked out $17 for a Kindle book for the same reason - and been horribly disappointed. But I’ve also downloaded a freebie from an indie author and been absolutely hooked on their work for life and been willing to pay for subsequent works!

I’ve had conversations with people who have read most of my eBook offerings and made the comment, ‘You should charge more for them.’

That’s really heartening, but I can’t. I’m a relative unknown not long out of the gate and if I hiked my prices, who would be willing to give me a punt? Somebody, nobody - it’s a terrific gamble.

I’ve also had conversations with people who know that I’m an Amazon bestseller on all of my 11 novels and mistakenly think that my longsuffering husband drives the white Audi R8 outside of his dreams and I use a hand rake to make my earnings into a neat pile every month. I wish!

The sad reality is that I, like many other authors are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Many of my novels are a whopping, fortune making 99c, because amongst the millions of other writers out there, I am a nobody. The sad irony is that of the 99c which a reader pays for my novel, I get a royalty of 35% and out of that royalty, the American taxman helps himself to a gleeful 30%. It doesn’t leave much. If I sell 20 books at 99c, I walk away with a swag bag containing just over $4. That wouldn’t get the fictitious R8 to the end of the street and back, but it might buy me a coffee. Actually, scrap that, it wouldn’t buy me a coffee. I take soy and decaf. It would get me coffee dregs or a sniff of the barista’s apron. Sigh. 

The debate about price rages on in every forum that I visit. At some point, somebody will have produced graphs and diagrams about what the optimum price is and how that might look for an indie author. I love looking at those. I don’t have a mathematical bone in my body, but I like the science of it. I know that $1.99 has been proven as ‘dead zone’ but, unfortunately, can’t remember why. I just know that I have to avoid that list price.

I followed a post recently from Google+ about price and was interested to see that readers had weighed into this one. It put a whole different slant on things, because the people whom the graphs and studies are done about, were actually there having their say.

I was astounded.

It came across loud and clear that readers view print books and eBooks completely differently. They actually believe they are paying for the cover, the physical print and the gloss. Hence they would pay for a print book, but not for an eBook.

Why?

Well as I watched the feed, the comments racked up. It seems that the author’s time, their personal investment in hours, sweat, blood and tears is worthless. It has no value to the reader. One comment made by a reader was that an eBook, 'costs the author nothing,' and they expect that 'nothing' cost to be passed on to them. All they see is the end product as though the book content happens by magic. They will stump up for an editor or an eye-catching cover because these are tangible things, but digital things are somehow ‘not real.’

Because so much on the internet is free, readers have been lulled into thinking that digital = free. You nip to the local shop to buy a newspaper and part with actual money, but if you want to read the news online, you just Google it and up it comes for free. You visit a shop to buy clothes and understand that the cost of the items you purchase include a supplement for the shop assistant’s wages and other overheads because they have a physical presence in the marketplace. When you shop online it’s cheaper and we have subliminally convinced ourselves that internet retailers don’t have the same overheads when in reality, of course they do. They have a warehouse, phone or computer operators, personnel stocktaking and posting out orders, but the illusion is that it all happens by magic.

That’s the trap that indie eBook authors are in.

We wouldn’t engage an editor and only pay them for the changes they make in our work. We have to pay for their time reading and working on our behalf. In the same way, when you take your car to the garage, who doesn’t look at the cost of the $20 part and have a conniption at the $200 of labour that it took to find and change said part? We hand over our credit card with an expression that reads, ‘paid under protest’ and decide that next time, we’ll have a go ourselves. But we don’t, do we? Because deep down we know that we’re paying them for their expertise and the time spent when the $20 part was actually stuck somewhere deep inside the engine that took three mechanics to fix; one to hold the part, one to dangle inside the bonnet and one to hold his feet.

Time in this century has become irrelevant. We take calls at home which land us with work problems at the weekend, for which we are not paid or thanked. If we want to continue to draw a salary - it’s expected. We all work extra hours for nothing and those people who wander in at dead on 8am and ping out the doors again at 5pm are not viewed well in today’s society. Militants, everyone whispers behind their hands, whilst wishing they had the courage to do that.

In New Zealand, there is what is referred to as the ‘kiwi-half-hour’ which basically means that someone can turn up at least half an hour late. I hate it. I’m English and it’s tantamount to rudeness, but I’ve had to get used to it. When you turn up late to meet me, you are telling me that my wasted time is of no value to you. You don’t care about me.

My family and I once turned up for dinner with NZ people we didn’t know, dead on the dot of 7pm. The home owner greeted us at the front door with, ‘You must either be English or Swedish.’

So if our time is irrelevant and nobody is willing to pay for it, is it any wonder that our hours of writing, editing, re-writing and publishing are seen the same way?

I don’t have an answer. It’s a worldwide issue about time generally, but the backlash hits anyone who works even more outside the box than the rest of society. Housewives and mothers have never felt valued.
‘What do you do all day?’

It’s just that the rot has spread and now impacts more of us.

In addition to being a novelist, I’m also an artist. A prospective purchaser is paying for my name and the cost of replenishing my store of equipment. Ultimately they will buy my work because it speaks to them and they like it. I can charge a fortune and price myself out of the market, or I can be realistic and understand that at the moment, nobody cares that it took me 3 weeks to make. If I price too high, they walk away.

We can only price our novels at what someone is willing to pay for them. Perhaps at the moment it’s not very much, but there’s always the hope that one day, it could be more. It’s not right and it’s definitely not fair, but it is unfortunately the way it is.

I’m not convinced that we can change the way a reader thinks about us personally, or views our contribution to the work in their hands - unless we can change the view of those around us - that time is not a free commodity. It costs somebody - me.

 
Respect me, respect my work.