Publishing
Ebook prices do a lot of work before anyone opens the file.
Too cheap and it can look like a gamble, or worse, like the book knows it has a problem. Too expensive and it starts acting like it has ideas above its station. Most readers probably don’t analyse it that neatly, but the number does set a tone. It tells people whether this is a quick impulse buy, a cautious experiment, or something that thinks it deserves a proper budget.
Odd little part of publishing, really. The price is often the first bit of storytelling.
Too cheap and it can look like a gamble, or worse, like the book knows it has a problem. Too expensive and it starts acting like it has ideas above its station. Most readers probably don’t analyse it that neatly, but the number does set a tone. It tells people whether this is a quick impulse buy, a cautious experiment, or something that thinks it deserves a proper budget.
Odd little part of publishing, really. The price is often the first bit of storytelling.
Price does set a signal, but ebook pricing is a bit less elegant than that. Half the time it’s just a compromise between platform expectations, discount habits and whether the publisher wants to move units or protect the paperback. Readers can read all sorts into it, naturally, but the number is often doing admin rather than storytelling.