Beacon Street

Beacon Point Romance Book Two

What’s going on this week? Well, in MY bookstore, Ever & Always debuted in paperback at Amazon. Putting out a print copy is no small feat — just ask any of my indie friends. Formatting pages and determining spine widths are not for the faint of heart. Ever heard of embedding fonts? Getting headers and footers to appear on the right pages? This is major stuff, my friends.

Also this week, both Point Surrender and Cape Seduction reappeared for Kindle after several months’ absence. (Here, we could also talk about the special challenges of ebook formatting, but it IS tiring.)

More exciting, I’ve decided to take my “California Lighthouses: The History & the Mystery” presentation out of mothballs and on the road. When I did this talk at the Santa Paula Library a couple of years ago, it was very well received. Now, updated to include more info on Angel’s Gate Lighthouse, the talk is better than ever and I’m hoping to be bringing it to local libraries and small bookstores soon. Stay tuned on that one.

Other news around the block: Lots a chatter of the packaging and pricing of “box sets”. Susan Griscom (my writing pal) and I both have series books and we’ve looked into how to capitalize on them. Amazon, of course, will allow us to “bundle” sets of books for sale, and we can even make a graphic of a box set to upload. The books, however, are merely shipped together, not packaged in any attractive way. I think where this is valuable is when hand-selling at a book signing, festival or convention. Having custom boxes printed is too costly, but I have an idea that involves some pretty card stock and sealing wax. Can’t wait to try it out.

Pricing is another matter. In the past, authors/publishers typically added together the prices of the books in the set and then deducted a small discount. Lately, however, I’ve seen box sets priced at one-half or less than the total of the books inside. This disturbs me, as does any ultra-discount and “free” pricing practices that seem to be so prevalent right now. I’m not criticizing those who do it, but I sure do lament that they feel they have to in order to get the attention of book buyers these days. But damn, with the easy access to multitudes of free books, who can compete and still hold onto their sense of self-worth?

Book pricing is a hot button for me, obviously. I can’t begin to pretend I understand it. I don’t seem to see a lot of difference no matter how I price mine. I know as a book buyer, I will pay (have paid) up to $10.00 for an ebook I really wanted. I prefer to keep it under $5.00, however. Right now, I have my books priced at $1.99 and $2.99, which seems to be about the average for relatively unknowns like myself. But I’ve seen a lot at $3.99 and $4.99. My first publisher charged $6.99 for ebooks with brand new authors and sometimes pretty marginal cover art. My second publisher charged $4.99 which I felt was a little high. She held that people expect/assume that the book is better and don’t mind the higher price. I agree with her, to some extent–mostly with regard to the inverse: books priced too cheaply might give the impression that that’s all they’re worth. That the author is somehow sub-standard and can only sell with deeply discounted pricing. Of course, that’s not necessarily true, but who can say what book buyers believe?

In the end, it’s clear that most of us aren’t in it “for the money” or surviving on royalties. I just wish we could at least attach a certain level of value to our books and be rewarded with moderate sales. I wish authors didn’t have to give away so much for free, thereby setting a precedent and teaching voracious readers that they really don’t have to pay for books anymore. It’s become a runaway train, and I’m still sitting in the station, wondering what happened.