SciFi and Fantasy eBook Club discussion

So I saw that super long thread about what price is too high for an ebook (which I won't repeat here), but then I found this surprising analysis of the Amazon sci fi and fantasy bestsellers: http://kevinomclaughlin.com/2012/02/2...

If you get to the second chart, why do you think there's such a big difference between sci-fi and fantasy ebook prices? And why do indie authors dominate one but not the other? More brand loyalty? Does this match your experiences?

Thanks!
Shuvom

What I've noticed is that a lot of the $0.99 "books" are just short stories. Even as short as 5 pages.

I think it would be more interesting to see the breakdown on a price per page. After all, the customer is paying for something to occupy his time, so more pages should equate to a higher price. At least, assuming quality is consistent. :)

Randy wrote: "...I think it would be more interesting to see the breakdown on a price per page..."

...Which may explain the difference - fantasy books tend to be hefty reads. I also think that the $2.99 sweet point is due to that being the lowest price to get 70% royalties on Amazon. It's very interesting research though.

Thanks for pointing me to an intriguing survey, Shuvom. I think Randy's right, there are more Kindle short stories in science fiction. I wrote science fiction and fantasy short stories before the Kindle launched, and it seemed to me at the time that there was much stronger support for sci fi over fantasy. So the larger number of eBook short stories (for which I have no more than gut feel evidence) possibly comes from that.

Another possible reason: perhaps series are more common with fantasy than sci fi?

I think it's the risk tolerance readers of the genre are willing to take, personally. I'll give almost any unknown sci-fi author a chance if the price is low enough and he/she makes me laugh. Even half-bad sci-fi stories can be entertaining with a good enough premise (or if they include zombies).

But when fantasy is done badly, it's BAD. And most new writers do things badly. So Fantasy readers want to stick to known names, and are willing to pay a premium for that.

That's what I got out of the survey, but I'll start looking at page length, thanks to what Randy and Tim mentioned. Fantasy does tend to be longer.

I have a link to another Smashwords study that showed that the top 100 ebooks are all over 100,000 words, so folks like longer ebooks.

IMHO.

I feel very wrong placing more than the minimum cost for my work. Not because I don't think it's worth it, but because I believe that the cost of something should in some way reflect the cost of production.

As matters stand I do not rely on my income as an author (thank god otherwise I'd be living in a cardboard box) and I pay such minimal costs to publish, in fact the majority of my "work" is just time spent rather than money. Given I'd rather be writing than doing anything else it's not time I begrudge. So I feel that pricing my work higher than the minimum 0.99 feels dishonest.

Of course a lot of readers disregard the 0.99 books as they feel the price reflects quality. I wonder, looking at the statistics, if you had the same book at 0.99 and 2.99 whether you'd tap into two separate markets.

Interesting though. Of course I'd obviously rather pay 2.99 for 50,000 words of brilliance than 0.99 for 100,000 words of nonsense.

L.E.,

I've heard a lot of authors say the same. But I'll make two points and then shut up.

One, I consider the six months of evenings I spent chained to a desk writing my book to be the cost of production, which is why I get mad when people pirate ebooks with the argument "well it didn't cost anything to make MY copy". So I want a little return on that, but everyone values their time differently.

And second, I was on a business trip, looking for something to read, and there was a book whose back cover and prologue made me almost pee my pants laughing right in the Barnes & Noble. I had never heard of the author, but I walked right up to the register and bought "John Dies At The End" in paperback for $16. And then it hit me- I didn't think twice about spending FIVE times what I'm charging for my book, for an "unknown" author, just because the prologue was SO catchy. And it was totally worth it, for the hours of enjoyment I got during that trip.

So maybe I should be charging more. I know I will for my second book, since folks seem to love the first.

Just what I've realized in the last month. I totally agree with your last sentence though.

Shuvom

To answer the question - I think it is an excellent analysis. Not quite clear how he extracted the data, but certainly interesting.

He draws the conclusion from the differences in sales figures for fantasy and sf, that sf readers are more adventurous than fantasy readers.
A different conclusion could be drawn - that fantasy readers are more satisfied with what is being traditionally published than sf readers.

Any thoughts on that one? As in if you read both sf and fantasy, are you happier with what is coming out from fantasy compared to sf?
(Or is it first time fantasy is really bad when its bad as Shuvun said?)

Regarding the ongoing discussion on price for self-published books on this thread. Unless someone is a natural genius storyteller, it takes a while, and writing several books at least to get to a good standard. (Judging this from talking to trad published authors at conventions, seeing work posted on line in critiques.) Some writers also submit some or all of their work for professional editing and critiquing, which costs hundreds of pounds.
So I think it is worth paying for quality writing, because it takes more effort than just the writing of the book you are buying, to get up to a professional standard.

I think it's worth throwing the following point into the mix for discussion.

Many indie writers produce for ebook only, whilst those writers with the Big 6, and those of us with new publishing houses, all want to see a real book on the bookcase for our efforts.

If you produce purely an ebook, the actual size is irrelevant to a degree. The cost to the author/publisher is the same if the book is 100,000 words or 20,000.

However, when you talk about a printed book, new economics come out. For the Big 6, the printing cost of a book, for example the chunky Rothfuss books, is the smallest part of their costs. So, they keep the price of the ebook high, because the delivery via ebook saves them almost nothing. For the smaller houses, mostly using POD - especially for new authors - the print cost is the highest part of their costs, so they can afford to discount the ebook heavily as delivery is much cheaper for them.

The self published guys have to decide what works for them best in competition with the publishers, and often chose a lower price to attract custom.

If you produce purely an ebook, the actual size is irrelevant to a degree. The cost to the author/publisher is the same if the book is 100,000 words or 20,000.

I'm afraid I disagree with you a bit on that. The more words there are, the longer it takes to write and to edit. There are costs associated with both of those. Yes, generating the actual eBook from the text is the same charge, but ideally you then check through what is produced and that too will take longer with a bigger book.

Will wrote: "If you produce purely an ebook, the actual size is irrelevant to a degree. The cost to the author/publisher is the same if the book is 100,000 words or 20,000...."

I agree with the previous poster. Authors who don't pay to have their books edited or their covers designed might agree with you. However, authors like myself, who are willing to spend money to produce a quality product, have a different outlook on pricing. The bigger the book (word count) the more it costs to produce the book. So in this case, it works against authors with substantive production costs to charge spectacularly low prices.

Yup, length of the book TOTALLY matters. Editors charge by the word, generally. There are some editors who have certain services that are done as a flat rate, but even that won't be cheap. The cover cost for ebook only would be the same no matter the length, but if you do add print in there, you have to pay for a back cover as well.

Also for longer works, some authors may be paying for more than one editor just to have a fresh set of eyes on the storyline after changes are made. I don't think I've paid for more than one editor for anything shorter than 50k, but for the novel lengths most of my work has seen at least two editors.

That's another good point, Maria. I use multiple editors on my books too. So that definitely adds to the expense. High word counts can be very costly to edit, especially when using more than one editor for quality control. Hence, proving the point that when it comes to books with varying word counts, they are not all equal to produce or price.

It doesn't look like it's been mentioned here, so I thought I'd let everyone know that this original analysis was done in Feb and since then, it looks like Amazon has changed their algorithms for ranking, resulting in a dip for Indie books. There is updated analysis to be found by following this link:

Amazon Analysis Update

As for word count of ebook, I'm sorry, it takes a LOT longer to write a 100,000 word novel than it does a 20,000 word short story. I can knock out a good 20K story inside a week with days left over to polish it before ever sending it to an editor. It takes a couple months, minimum, for me to get a 100K word novel completed in rough draft. Then I have to polish and submit. BIG difference in my time and effort invested - and I do a lot of research for a hard SF novel too.

Stephanie wrote: "As for word count of ebook, I'm sorry, it takes a LOT longer to write a 100,000 word novel than it does a 20,000 word short story. I can knock out a good 20K story inside a week with days left over..."

Agreed and that is part of the reason you now see so many more novellas and short stories coming out from both indies and big six. An author can intro her work with a shorter time investment without having to worry about whether it will also sell in print (short stories rarely sell a lot of copies, especially when they are combined in an anthology and priced at 10 or more bucks).

Maria wrote: "Agreed and that is part of the reason you now see so many more novellas and short stories coming out from both indies and big six. An author can intro her work with a shorter time investment without having to worry about whether it will also sell in print..."

Exactly right. On the other hand, while I DO have short stories and novellas out there, my preferred medium is the novel, most of which end up being 100K+ words. My publisher and I don't price them outrageously high, but getting a decent royalty back on my hard work requires the prices be higher than one might expect. Granted, an ebook doesn't have print costs to factor in, but in all the discussion I hear about the editors, layout editors, artists, etc. getting paid for their work on the manuscript, the fundamental payment of the ebook's creator is often forgotten. If I get a dollar from every ebook I have out there, I'm doing really, really good, generally.

Stephanie wrote: "Maria wrote: "Agreed and that is part of the reason you now see so many more novellas and short stories coming out from both indies and big six. An author can intro her work with a shorter time inv..."

From a lot of threads I read, paying the author doesn't seem to concern many...

For what it's worth, editing costs for me are much higher than print. I spend 50 to 100 dollars to get the print copies correct/color right/spacing. I spend a lot more on editing.

Even big 6 authors are lucky to make 70 cents on a mass market paperback copy. For hardback they make about 3.50 per copy. This is not a "get rich" career.

Editing costs are very harsh. The way things are going, it seems very unlikely that I'll even make back the cost of editing from the sale of my ebook.

The worst part of this is that I'm doing a series, which makes me think that the next book I should probably figure out a way to self-edit (or find a trustworthy friend/group of friends who "know them their Engish") if I don't want to dig myself into a deep financial hole.

Not making any money from my ebook doesn't bother me that much. I write recreationally and as a hobby--I'm ecstatic when any random stranger picks up and reads my story, regardless of what they paid for it. But making NEGATIVE money on my ebook? My enthusiasm only stretches so far.

Bert wrote: "Editing costs are very harsh. The way things are going, it seems very unlikely that I'll even make back the cost of editing from the sale of my ebook.

The worst part of this is that I'm doing a se..."

Bingo on the stretching. Have a couple of trusted friends beta read it and/or find a cheaper editor. The good news is that series sell better than stand alones and putting out the second book sometimes really helps the first book.

I also know a very inexpensive beta reader who does a good job finding plot holes, inconsistencies and the occasional typo. PM me if you want more info. She may have some slots open.