RANDOM KINDLE NEWS - March 4, 2011
""Rise of the 99-cent Kindle e-book" by ZDNet's David Carnoy
This is a long article covering several aspects of e-book pricing today, which should be somewhat interesting to both budding authors and Kindle owners.
Here's what Carnoy had to say about a case study of experimenting with pricing and revenue share under Amazon's self-publishing models:
' Case study: "Fifth Avenue"
Christopher Smith, who wrote the novel "Fifth Avenue," priced his novel at US$2.99 when he launched it last October. He says that with some social media outreach--he did an iPad and a Kindle giveaway for those who tweeted about the book--and little else, the book quickly reached the Amazon Top 100 and peaked at No. 4. After the initial rise, Smith then decided to drop the price of the book to 99 cents to maintain his ranking in the top 100, which is key to generating sales.
Thanks to some controversy over gay sex scenes in the book that touched off heated discussions in Amazon's Kindle message boards, Smith says "Fifth Avenue" remained in the Top 100 for three months and also has done well on Amazon's U.K. Kindle Store. His sales, he says, are in the "six figures", and he's now represented by an "A-list" agent, Matt Bialer at Sanford J. Greenburger.
"When I went to 99 cents, I was going for longevity," Smith says. Later, when he was firmly planted in the Top 100, he started playing with pricing and listed the book back at US$2.99. For every US$2.99 book he sold on the Kindle, he needed to sell six books at 99 cents to make the same amount of money. While he drifted downward on the best-seller list, if he priced at US$2.99, he says he was making significantly more money.
"To keep the book on the list as long as possible, I'd just switch it back to 99 cents and it would quickly climb the list again," Smith says. "Rinse and repeat. This went on for months." '
Other sections of this article on the trend toward 99-cents pricing include: How we got here; The App Store effect: Price drops; The new pricing sweet spot; Whither publishers?
SATIRE NOT THAT FAR FROM THE TRUTH ! :-)
"Apple To Take 30% Cut On Voice Orders Taken Over iPhone"
It starts:
' (Palo Alto, California) Apple announced today that as of March 1st it will take a 30% cut of all commerce done over the iPhone. Apple will use a voice recognition system to monitor all phone calls and transcribe order information so that any company taking voice orders over the iPhone can be billed. The announcement is a clarification of a policy released to developers and publishers last week when Apple indicated that all subscriptions purchased through the phone would be subject to a 30% fee. 'You'll want to read the rest of it at Unconfirmed Sources (Kindle-edition readers will be able to click through the link too. Press the Menu button there and select "Article Mode" to read it and, when finished, press Menu and "Web Mode" and the BACK button to get back to the blog.)
QUOTE OF NOTE
This is London's Money page writes:
" Referring to Amazon's 'best-selling item ever', the 3G Kindle, Fortune observed: 'The tablet continues to dominate the e-reader market, despite initial fears that Apple's iPad would be a problem.No surprise to Kindle users though.
'Now, it seems many people are buying both, to serve different purposes.'"
Kindle 3's (UK: Kindle 3's), DX Graphite
Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or highest-rated ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
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