How do you advertise and sell $0.99 books?

[Krista D. Ball]

I don't want to chase around after people who can only afford free and 99 cent books. I don't want to be scrapping for a few scraps to get noticed, hopefully picked up by a big blog promotion, or have someone popular cite me on their website.

What I want is readers who are willing to pay for my work.

I don't have a lot of them, sure, but I have some and a few more with every work I put out. My publisher didn't say how I was unknown and price me at 99 cents. No, they priced me at $4.99, which is still a great price for an ebook (the print is $13, again, great price). Readers have paid extra for me to ship them autographed copies of the print book (I went through a box already and will need to order another now). They tweet about my work, they recommend it to their friends...they are my readers.

I'm not saying that bargain readers aren't loyal; some are. However, studies of the retail world show time and time again that bargain basement shopper generally are loyal to the price, not the store. They will change stores if they see something cheaper elsewhere. There's plenty of books for those folks. I'll stick with a different demographic, who want to say "this was a great book" not, "this was a good book for being 99 cents" or "this was good enough, I wouldn't pay for it of course."