Price - Not Such a Factor in Sales

It's been an interesting discovery. Perhaps it was the lack of pushing the product or maybe it just doesn't matter, but when I dropped the eBook pricing for The Adventures of Reztap to $2.99 I didn't sell a single one. Whereas, in my inital push to get the book out there, I had priced it at $4.99. I sold several at that price, but perhaps that was because of the newness of the book. I really can't say.

I do believe that my marketing leaves much to be desired. It would not appear the price of the book means one wit to whether or not someone will actually purchase it. History suggests if someone has been reached, noticed the book, was interested in that subject and willing to pay a fair price for it then there is a sale. I don't know how else to quantify the results.

I will leave the eBook at $2.99 through the holiday shopping period. After that I will raise it once again to $4.99. It will be interesting to see what the results of this post will be before and after the price is raised.

For your ease of purchasing frenzy which I'm certain will occur after this post, I'm putting the links to both the hard copy and eBook of The Adventures of Reztap below:

Kobo
Amazon (Kindle eBook & paperback)
Diesel
Sony
Barnes and Noble (Nook eBook & paperback)
Apple (iTunes)
Smashwords

Happy purchasing! Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/WinterSolstice/etc.

Artemus

iTunes - Finally!

It is with great fanfare that I announce The Adventures of Reztap is finally available on iTunes! It was a long wait (longer than I aniticpated), but I'm happy it's finally there.

For those wondering exactly how long the wait was, here is the timeline of events for you to reference for your own eBook publishing adventures:

5/12/2012 - eBook first published to Smashwords. Immediately enrolled in Premium channel, but takes a while for approval.
5/30/2012 - Premium status approved. At this point, it is up to the distributors to pick up the electronic data to publish the eBook on their sites.
5/31/2012 - Kobo picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/2/2012 - Opted out of Amazon (Kindle & CreateSpace) since I would be publishing directly there.
6/5/2012 - Diesel picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/19/2012 - Baker & Taylor picks up the data from Smashwords.
6/21/2012 - Sony picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/13/2012 - Barnes and Noble picks up the data from Smashwords.
7/21/2012 - Apple picks up the data from Smashwords.

Every disributor listed here has a schedule for picking up data within a week of its availability on Smashwords - obviously the schedule is a very loose guideline to which they don't adhere very closely. The nice thing is it gives an approximation of when (AFTER picking up the data) you can expect to see the eBook available on the web site and they've been pretty accurate. While it took forever for iTunes to pick up the data for the eBook, it was finally available today (7/26/2012) less than the two weeks it said it might take.

So when distributing through Smashwords, you can anticipate (but not guarantee) that your work will be available with two months of enlisting in the Premium Distribution Channels.

I don't know how other aggregators work, but I look forward to hearing tales of your adventures here soon.

Happy iTuning,
Artemus