I’m thinking of either selling my upcoming book for free, or for $4.5 (it’s 275K words, so I think that’s justified. This will be in a 4 book series, so keep in mind that selling it for free would build interest and fans for the sequels. What do you guys think is the better option? Also, how much money do ads generaly generate now without ad sense?
How does one sell something for free?
@Drazen
How does one not get the point of the aforementioned statement, get over it, and actually provide useful feedback for once? Clearly that sentiment is arcane to you so I don’t know why I’m asking you at all. NEXT!
@DJ_CUTY Maybe I’d have something more productive to contribute, if you actually provided some information about the work, beyond its word count.
@Drazen
Length is objective, qaulity is subjective. My question is, which is a better marketing choice? But I can promise you that it’ll be worth $4.5. The stats are dynamic, your choices have impact, the wording is eloquent, the characters have personality, the ideas are unique, and the plot is interesting. You’ve already seen of the illustrations as well.
@DJ_CUTY Quality is subjective, but so is value. You are asking for a value to be given, - namely its price. You’re basically asking me to put a price on an apple based on its weight alone. But how fresh is the apple? What does it taste like? What’s its texture? Et cetera.
You see the point.
But yeah, if you’re torn between zero and $4.50, might I suggest going for a middle ground of some sort?
@DJ_CUTY
If you’re selling through Hosted Games, CoG will be determining the price, which is usually $1.99 (though they gave me $2.99 for Sabres of Infinity’s illustrations).
The real question is: do you need money now, or money later? If you release the first installment of a series for free, you’ll probably get more money in the long run, but if you release as a paid app, then it’ll get you money sooner. I’d say it’s based on your own priorities.
@Drazen
I thought about a middle ground, but it seems that the consumers don’t care much about the price, whereas the stingy people will only read the free books. Therefore, it’s in my best interest to sell for a higher price if indeed I choose to put a price on it because it is probable that the same amount of people will buy it regardless of whether it’s 3 or $4.5
@Cataphrak
I do need money now but if I made my book free and it could still make me just enough income for now, and more in the future, that’d my ideal choice. But if it won’t generate a sizeable income initialy even if and when my book sells well, then I’d be forced to put a price on it. And @JasonStevanhill told me it was negototiable, so I thought I’d shoot for $4.5 since Slammed was $4.
@DJ_CUTY
If you need the money now, I’d say go for $4.49 now. When sequels come out, you can always lower the price.
@DJ_CUTY $1 or 2 could be regarded as pittance; $4.5 requires at least a mild interest. Besides, if people get “275k” words for free, wouldn’t they be irked at paying for the sequels? You could always charge low for the first, and put it up to $4.5 for the remaining three, anyway.
@Drazen and @Cataphrak
Well do you think more people would buy it if it was $1 as oppossed to $4.5? I just haven’t noticed a difference for the paid books from what I can see.
Not necessarily, DJ. There are a bunch of weird psychological tricks involved with pricing, and there’s no way you’re going to appeal to everyone. Some people are super thrifty and won’t spend more than $1 on an app. Others only rate a product’s value by the price tag, and they only buy value (even if they have to give it bad ratings later, if it doesn’t match up to their expectations.)
One guy I know writes fitness e-books and sells them for $39.99 to $59.99. They’re about 100 pages on average, mostly filled with pictures of proper form for weightlifting and other crap like that. He’s made pretty good money off of them, surprisingly. They have a mentality that if it costs that much, it MUST be something worth having.
Some people are thrifty, and others spend big on what they perceive as value. I’d recommend starting the first one off low, then bumping it up for the sequels, but only if the first one does well.
I’d be interested in how well a game sells at $4.50. I’d hope you’d share the sales figures. I think it would be an interesting experiment to see how high the price of choice of games can be pushed. I do think they’re rather cheap just now.
It’s far, far easier to lower the price of something than it is to raise them.
@FairyGodFeather
I’ll definitely be releasing the specifics of my sales. I wish more of the authors would. And I see these books as cheap…I’d much rather buy an interactive novel than a cheese burger.
I think use your first book as a tester. Try and release it for as much as you can. See how it sells, especially compared to other choice games.
I’m tempted to say that $3.99 sounds less imposing than $4.50 That there’s a world of psychological difference between that 61 cents.
$4.50 is £2.88 which would make the game £3.45 in the UK
$3.99 is £2.55 which would make it £3.06 in the UK
That second price is a bit more appealing to me than the first since I think much higher than £3 you’re starting to drift out of the impulse purchase area.
@Cataphrak
So your illustrations boosted the price? I have 9 amazing illustrations being implemented into my book- would that boost the price as well?
Don’t overshoot, particularly if there’s no demo/free version at all.
I’d go for no higher than $3.99 unless you’ve got something well and truly obvious (to a buyer before purchase) that sets the bar above the rest. A large word count doesn’t do that. I’m sure your game is great, but assume I’m of the more cynical type - I don’t know that your game is good for sure - and I’d be hesitant to try my luck on anything over £3. If it’s £3 or £2 I might be more inclined to think “what the hell, at that price I’ll give it a go!”.