I’ve talked a lot about why publishers and editors should be nervous, but today I figure it’s time to point the finger at authors. There are a lot of good reasons why we should be excited about e-books, but there are also some things that should make the beads of sweat pop out on our collective brows.
Today in a book store, readers walk in and have literally thousands of books to choose from. In an e-book store, there are hundreds of thousands of choices. Marketing and outreach will be key if you hope to convince that one reader to choose your book out of all of the books at their disposal.
But something even more worrisome is on the horizon. When I go into a book store, there are new books, or there are classics. The classics (Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austin) are often much cheaper than the new releases. Sometimes you can pick them up for just a few bucks.
However, with e-books, these books will be free, not just cheap. You may think there is not much difference between cheap and free, but you would be wrong. :)
In Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely talks about an experiment where he offered Hersey’s kisses for one penny, and a much better kind of chocolate for 26 cents. When he did this, most people opted for the more expensive chocolate. Hershey’s kisses just aren’t that good.
However, then he lowered the price of both chocolates by one penny. Now the Hershey Kiss was free, and the better chocolate was a quarter. The results flip flopped. More people chose the inferior-but-free chocolate to the better chocolate, even though the price difference was identical.
Ariely says the reason we saw this change is because whether something is 1 penny, 1 dollar, or a hundred dollars, we have to make a decision. Is the benefit worth the cost. However, when the price drops to free, we don’t see the obvious monetary cost. There is no decision. We see that it’s free, and we take it, because there is no cost.
So, right now authors compete against each other. But what happens when readers realize they can download thousands of books for free from Project Gutenberg? It’s daunting enough to think I’m in competition with Steven King and J. K. Rowling, but Mark Twain? Charles Dickens? That is stiff competition indeed. And what makes it worse is their books are priced to move.
Sweating now?
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