Agency book pricing

[jbcohen]

Personally I see the pricing model as not really relevant since I have cut out the middle man in terms of my book buying.  I no longer have any need for book stores since I typically do business directly with the publishers.

[Harry Shannon]

The race to the bottom in pricing worries me for authors like myself, who have been "midlist" for many years. There are solid indie authors, but I don't mind paying good money for a professionally written, well presented book.

[MariaESchneider]

I don't like it. In cases where a hardback is coming out (Patricia Briggs) the kindle book is 12.99.  Well, that can't be discounted.  And the paperback won't be out for a year.  So just like in the past, I'm going to be waiting for the paperback.  And when it does come out, even though I'd rather buy it for Kindle, it will be cheaper for me to buy it in Amazon's 4 for 3 because they can do that with paperbacks--but can't offer anything on the Kindle deal.   Since the agency pricing started, it's often cheaper for me to do a 4 for 3 deal than get kindle and I'd much rather have the kindle copy.  Lord knows I don't have the space for more paperbacks.  I end up reading them, keeping some and having to take the rest to the Library.    Doing a 4 for 3 can save me as much as 8 dollars.  Or worse for the author, I'll end up finding a used copy of the hardback and buying it for 5 bucks.  But since I REALLY support this author, my plan is to read it at the library and then buy it later in paperback.  If I remember that plan a year from now.

I don't like the "race to the bottom" in pricing either, but I think that is slowly starting to change.  Now that the newness has worn off, I think people are just more selective about what they buy (I am) and while freebies are up for grabs, I'm not at all opposed to spending $2.99 or $4.99 for a book that I really think I'll enjoy.  I don't just grab 99 cent books because they are 99 cents.  But I'm not known for normal buying patterns...

[acellis]

I buy both traditionally published and indie published book. But I will never again publish my own work through the traditional publishers.

[BTackitt]

Whether I buy "agency" priced books or not, I feel it is wrong of the publishers to force a price point on e-books when they cannot do the same with DTB. If they tried the same thing with DTB, you KNOW  every single bookseller in America would be out for blood saying it was unlawful, smacked of collusion, etc.. But since this move was STRICTLY a move against AMAZON, well, that's ok.

B***S***.

[jbcohen]

I typically like to recommend to authors to write a series of books then to give away the first in the series and charge for the subsequent volumes.  BAEN does that with the Honor Harrington novels and John Dalmas's Lion of the Farside series.  I saw that one when I first looked at the pricing scheme.  I really don't mind the loss leader in this form, gives me a chance to sample your writing before I comit dollars.  I also don't mind giving you a little extra for the subsequent volumes to make up for the loss leader as long as you don't go over my $8 limit, at that point I refuse to buy any.

[Geoffrey]

I've been watching this thread and it's really more about pricing and publishing than about pricing from a readers perspective .... so I'm going to lock it.