Way back in February, I did an informal market survey of various authors' ebooks and rankings (noting the price of each ebook, since I thought that might be a significant factor with respect to generating sales). For four weeks, I kept track of the rankings of the bestselling book by three unidentified authors (adding in a New York Times bestselling author at week #4, just for kicks).
You may also recall that Author Y believed that there were three major criteria for achieving ebook success: 1) have a good-looking cover, 2) set the right price ($1.99, at that time) and 3) have "an established reputation . . . as a writer."
You can read the original post for the details about the different authors, but to put it in a nutshell, Author X is traditionally published and has a highly respectable industry track record (in terms of reviews, etc.), Author Y is a relatively well-known author (respected within the industry) who markets like crazy and Author Z is a new, relatively unknown indie author with good to great reader reviews who markets like super-crazy (and priced the book at 99 cents). (Author A is the New York Times bestseller. A-list. Ha ha. Okay.)
I decided to do another study of these same authors. Now, here's where it gets interesting. At week #3, Author X lowered the ebook's price by a dollar. Probably (I'm guessing) to boost sales and rankings. At week #4, Author Y put up a new book cover. One (it was hoped) that would encourage more people to buy the book.
Oh, and Author A's ebook is a recent bestseller priced at $7.99.
Let's take a look at the results (again, comparing average ranks over the course of four weeks):
Week 1 Avg. Rank: Author X #52,383 - Author Y #645 - Author Z #457 - Author A #15,615
Week 2 Avg. Rank: Author X #72,370 - Author Y #460 - Author Z #436 - Author A #17,104
Author X lowers ebook price by $1.00.
Week 3 Avg. Rank: Author X #46,030 - Author Y #581 - Author Z #449 - Author A #15,740
Author Y changes cover.
Week 4 Avg. Rank: Author X #45,293 - Author Y #943 - Author Z #349 - Author A #11,087
Wow. The drop in price appears to have improved Author X's sales, but not by much. And the cover change to Author Y's book was, oddly enough, followed by a marked drop in rank.
In the interest of fairness, I figured the rank may have dropped due to some strange intangible factor associated with changing covers. I decided to wait a few weeks and check again. Here's what I found:
Week 5 Avg. Rank: Author X #57,543 - Author Y #1,439 - Author Z #304 - Author A #5,427
Okay, it looks as though matters have deteriorated further for Author Y with the new cover. Weird. It could be that there's no connection between the cover and sales at all. Which leads me to believe that the emphasis on cover is misplaced, along with reputation and traditional publishing record.
Author A is doing relatively well with the $7.99 ebook, but this IS a New York Times bestseller and something of an outlier, anyway. Even so, at least at this point, Author Z is cleaning everyone's clock.
Bottom line on ebooks: worry more about the quality of your content than the look of your cover; lower prices sell more books; strong marketing/promotion and happy readers (i.e., good word of mouth) trump traditional publishing track records.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
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4 comments:
hmm I am not sure you can deduce much on such short-term numbers--to me, the more important factor (as an author) is how much each book earns. A book ranked #400 at 99 cents will probably earn the author less than a book ranked #4,000 that is $2.99.
My books historically hover between 3,000 and 12,000, and the 99 centers do a lot better but earn far less money overall. So the ranking is meaningless to me and I am not sure it matters much to readers--but I will acknowledge that MORE SALES, no matter the price, leads to more sales due to Amazon's algorithms.
Plus, you are way more likely to drop if you are selling well than if you are plateaued somewhere.
Sounds like "Author Y" just has poor taste in covers. LOL. Personally, I think a well done cover still matters when it comes to attracting eyeballs. My sales on "Weaker Sex" were sluggish until I did an overhaul of the cover. Since then, sales have doubled. Coincidence? I think not. But regardless, I do agree with you about good content -- it is, and always will be King.
Hi Scott,
One thing I didn't emphasize as much in this post as in the one that preceded it is that this is far from being a scientific survey. However, since first looking at the numbers for these authors, while I haven't kept close track, I have checked in from time to time (not in a methodical or regular way), just to see how they're doing.
One interesting thing I noticed (but didn't get into, because it didn't occur during the nine weeks total that I kept close track) was that Author X kept changing the price, from as high as $2.99 to as low as $.99. Yet it didn't seem to have a substantial effect on rank.
So low price alone is clearly not enough. Even so, I think (particularly if you're an indie author and have no previous publishing track record to speak of) it's a good strategy to start off charging .99 for novels and pouring on the marketing.
This approach has worked for indie author Elisa Lorello who hit the Kindle bestseller list by selling a well-written (I'm presuming, since I haven't read her work -- yet :)) novels for 99 cents and doing the blogging and other online marketing necessary to spread the word.
Karen McQuestion, of course, is a HUGE success story. I don't know if she started off pricing her novels at 99 cents, but her prices were definitely not high when she hit the bestseller list.
As for rank being "meaningless," I'd have to disagree. I don't think rank is the only thing to shoot for. Readers likely don't care about rank. However, having a high rank draws industry attention and attendant publicity. Publicity gets your book and your name out there, which in turn sells books. That's why I know about Elisa Lorello and that's probably why Karen McQuestion has a movie deal for her books (or, at least, it's probably a very significant factor).
Having said that, I think 99 cents is a good "starter price" for new indie novelists. At some point (after an author has "gained steam" in the rankings), I would advocate raising the price to $2.99, in order to get the greater royalty. I absolutely agree that lower sales with a higher royalty will reap greater profits and create a more sustainable readership base. The question is how high do you shoot in the rankings before you increase the price. I think the higher you shoot, the better off you'll be later on, but that's just my theory.
I've seen other indie authors take this approach and I think it makes sense.
Hi Anon,
I didn't mean to overstate my case on the subject of covers, actually. Good covers DO matter, for good or ill. It's like any other sort of branding. A sloppy, unprofessional cover will make the author look sloppy and unprofessional. Not good.
What I am saying is that when I think about the agonizing and tinkering some authors get wrapped up in when it comes to covers, I think they can get a bit carried away.
In the case of Author Y, the change in cover was SO slight, I wondered why it was necessary.
Anyhow, I completely agree that a book should have a professional cover, layout and everything else. It's all part of creating a good product.
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