On Books & E-Books Pricing

Just read a Gigaom Article on "new tips in books pricing"

Summary of article

Nothing new suggested here but still highlighting the points made just in case... and then taking forward from there.
The article discusses 2 /3  "new" strategies for e-books.

• Bundling
• Free - 
• Giving the first book for free in a series
• Giving an earlier title from an author free when new one is coming out. 

The article seems to be aimed at softening publishers and authors  by applying a stamp of approval on the strategy. Since most of the times publishers and authors resist the idea, and the holy promise in the article should help them bring around.

As the "strategy" has always been known to retailers. There's no surprise that Free Works.

Above all, all the article is focusing on is an electronic application of offline models. Internet and technology provide many more opportunities which most e-book sellers seem to be missing. Instead of going into that, i will quickly go into more relevant offline models which have not yet been ported online.

Thoughts

Free has always worked and always will. But every time you give out something for free, you raise customer expectations and mis-inform them. If you just made things free, how did you add value? Free was always an option.Why would you make your products compete with free?

There are only some scenario where price doesn't affect customer choices, or is not the prime consideration at-least.

• Value Vs. Perceived Value - Gym membership models.
• Occasion - Gifting, Airports, etc.
• Monopoly of content - Prescribed textbooks etc.

Loyalty based Models.

Rather it will make more sense  if we built more loyalty based models like Book clubs which allows you to get special prices. Most of profits can come from a GYM membership kind of models, where non-readers are taxed more than readers.

Gifting E-Books

Gifting is another model which tech/e-books haven't explored much. People always want to gift things to people. In this age of social media, where you may just know the e-mail address of a good online friend, gifting is tough.

Conclusion

Technology and Big Data seem to have removed the premium placed on editorial selections, but in reality, the editorial selection has become a hidden player. So must not be underestimated.

Data based electronic selection models are vicious circle which feeds itself, and keeps driving the selection quality down (includes shopping cart based models). There will always be more fiction readers than non-fiction readers. And since most models treat all books similar, fiction keeps on coming up as suggestions to a reader and it keeps growing.

With the same data, publishers realize they need to print more fiction than non-fiction, so more fiction gets published and so on..you know where it goes.

Social Responsibility

If you are an author or a publisher, its not just a job. You have a moral and social responsibility. That is the reason that society in many countries doesn't levy sales tax.

If you feel that there is a social responsibility in selling books, then just be more aware of the larger picture, and please consciously try to improve situations.

If its just a job, then screw society, and welcome profits, till you find you are selling glorified porn. 50 shades is a start. At some point in my life, i can see myself writing an article on how we can implement porn pricing models on books.