Publishing
Ebook pricing is one of those oddly moralised decisions in indie publishing. Too low and you risk looking cheap, or training readers to wait. Too high and you may price out the cautious reader who might have tried you if the entry point felt less like a gamble.
The awkward bit is that price often says more about positioning than value. Same book, different number, different signal. Which is mildly ridiculous, but there it is.
The awkward bit is that price often says more about positioning than value. Same book, different number, different signal. Which is mildly ridiculous, but there it is.
Price is also a laziness test for readers, which sounds harsher than I mean it. A lot of people will happily spend £4 on a coffee without blinking, then treat a £2.99 ebook like a risk assessment. That’s not really about value. It’s about whether the book is easy to imagine buying in the first place.
For indie work, I suspect clarity matters more than clever pricing games.
For indie work, I suspect clarity matters more than clever pricing games.
The trouble is that ebook price has become a proxy for trust, and trust is a messier thing than numbers. Some readers read £2.99 as “impulse buy”, others as “probably disposable”, which is absurd but predictable. I’d rather see authors choose a price they can live with for a year than keep fiddling it like a thermostat and hoping the market develops manners.