The Upward Path

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On the pricing of ebooks

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I just had this experience. Someone recommended a book. Sounded interesting, might get, wondering about print or ebook format. Grabbed the Kindle sample to test it out, liked what I read. Kindle book price is £11.15. Process stops for further internal debate.

By the way, the book in question is Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sachs. It looks good and relevant enough to my interests that I will end up getting it, and if I do I’ll post a review. That price is about the same as I can get the hardback for if I look at Amazon’s marketplace sellers. Regardless of comparisons, it’s too high as an absolute number.

You must price ebooks lower than the print version, by a margin that’s notable in the mind of the customer. Yes, they offer some benefits that print books don’t, but most consumers won’t be thinking about those.

  • Customers know they’re not getting a physical thing, and they know that the physical thing has production costs. So in their heads there’s a sort of natural justice that says the ebook costs you less so it should cost them less too.
  • You own a print book, and can lend, give or re-sell it. A lot of people also think it’s  a preferable reading experience, though that’s eroding. Folks are gradually waking up to the fact that you only rent ebooks. You can’t share them freely, and if Amazon or whoever wants to take them away from you it can. (This is going to be an interesting field to watch in the next couple of years.) With print you’re paying for an object; with ebooks you’re paying for an experience.
  • Marketing of ebooks is all about speed and convenience. It’s about being able to find something that interests you, check out a bit more about it, click, payment happens behind the scenes, content appears instantly in your hand. Maybe there are people who are wealthy enough that the £10.00 barrier doesn’t trigger extra caution, but I think for most people it will. Don’t put barriers in the way of people saying yes.

Finally, of course this is all context-related. I personally sell PDF books priced at $10+ in the roleplaying game market. So maybe I’m just talking about where the expectations are set at Amazon and similar stores, and you need to think about the psychology of each sales channel’s users.

 

Word Fu

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I realised last night that I have something in common with my qigong teacher. Qigong is a Chinese system of movement to improve health. You can use a mental shorthand of “a bit like tai chi” if that helps (though of course there are reasons why it’s inaccurate, like tai chi being a martial art and qigong not).

My teacher has been doing martial arts since he was a kid. He’s said on a couple of occasions that he doesn’t know what it’s like to start an exercise-type thing for the first time in later life (mid to late thirties in my case): our journeys are different from his.

I’ve been doing things with words all my life. I’m used to getting them technically correct and marshalling them into newsletters, reports, books, etc. I fundamentally don’t, and can’t, understand what it’s like for someone who hasn’t developed those skills much. Of course, I can still help with what they’re trying to do, just as my teacher can, and enable them to get better results.

What sparked this line of thought? Bad books. I’ve seen a few interesting-looking novels on the Kindle store, grabbed the previews and found that the author has lots of great ideas but does not have the craft of writing. They use words inappropriately; there are typos, repetition, phrases that don’t ring true. Dialogue seems a particular difficulty. Instead of a smooth delivery that lets the writing fade into the background so you can get lost in the story, you’re stuck in a conflict between a continual jarring effect and the desire to find out what happens next. For me that tends to lead to abandoning the book, because of the mismatch between my standards and what the author has done.

That led me to think about how much this matters in the bigger picture. Are those “bad books” actually brave books or foolish books? The line between constructive and destructive criticism is a fine one.

Isn’t it a good thing that the internet has opened up new, low-friction ways for people to get their messages out there? Yes it is. One must also recognise that rather a lot of people don’t give a hoot about finely-honed writing, if Amazon reviews and indications around the net are to be believed. That’s probably because they don’t have a focus on writing skills themselves, so a lot of missteps pass them by without troubling them. They just want the stirring yarn. If lots of readers are happy, to what extent should we criticise a work for falling short of a formal standard? Maybe the internet, with all its easy, rapid communications, is pulling us away from standardised English toward a multitude of individual dialects – as I believe it was in centuries past. I suspect this will become a big topic of debate as the ebook phenomenon matures.

This is a point of learning and exploration for my own “teaching”. It’s the balance between making the best work possible and helping actual real people to do what they want and need. Much like my qigong teacher has to correct one thing at a time rather than trying to get the students to do what he can.

I think that if you’re going to do the thing that should involve a commitment to do it well. There has to be a first release, and if you go on to do more you’ll probably look back on it and see its flaws because your skills have developed. But there has to be a dividing line between “not ready for the limelight” and “good enough, let’s go”. Publishing is so easy now, but I don’t think that lets people off the hook of putting the work in (or getting the help) and developing the craft to make a genuinely good product. That’s not just a work ethic. It’s practical, helping you to get customers, satisfy them, and keep them coming back, rather than losing them as those ebooks lost me.

What do you think? What lines would you draw?

 

Design in the mobile age

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Over the last few years, computing has been moving from “What machines can we give people?” to “What do people want to be able to do?”

The number one answer to that has been mobility. If computers can do cool things for us, we want to access those wherever we are, not just at our desks.

The number two answer has been that people don’t care about hardware and software, but about the media and information that catch their interest in the moment. Listening to music, watching videos, getting information about the weather or local cinema times…

Here’s a canter through how the technology has changed, and a starter for thinking about what it means for designing your documents.

[Read more…] about Design in the mobile age