notes on SOUL OF SORCERY pricing
A few people asked why I set the price for SOUL OF SORCERY at $3.99, since the previous DEMONSOULED books were all $2.99. I thought about the pricing for a while, and decided on $3.99 for three reasons.
-First, SOUL OF SORCERY was a really long book. The final draft weighed in at 134,000 words, and Amazon calculated it at about 530 pages. By contrast, SOUL OF SERPENTS was about 120,000 words, and and SOUL OF DRAGONS about 110,000. SOUL OF SORCERY was long enough that I seriously considered splitting it into two books, but I decided to keep it as one.
-Second, Amazon weighs its algorithms in such a way that higher-priced books get a higher sales rank. So, if a $0.99 book and a $2.99 book sell the same amount of copies, the $2.99 book will get a higher sales rank. And people do look at sales rank when considering whether or not to buy a book. I think psychologists call this “preselection” – if we see someone else is enjoying something, we’re more likely to try it ourselves.
-Finally, I wanted to see what would happen if I did set the price at $3.99. One of the fun things about ebooks is that you can try things that you couldn’t with traditional publishing.
All that said, I do think very strongly that SOUL OF SORCERY is worth your $3.99. I am very grateful to the thousands of people (literally) who have read the DEMONSOULED books, and because of that, I take writing the best story that I can write very seriously.
And $3.99 is still cheaper than a gallon of gas in much of the United States (and certainly all of the UK), and an ebook will last much longer than a gallon of gas. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about an ebook accidentally making your car explode. 🙂
-JM
Hey, I’m cool with it. After all it’s only a dollar more, and your stuff is worth the admission (actually they’re worth more than that…but don’t let that change your pricing 😉 )
Oh and on a Soul of Sorcery related note:
I just bought the book a day or so ago, can’t wait to start reading it! But this is where I feel I should point something out. I have a kindle so I buy stuff off Amazon. Well your books are usually linked together there. I mean everytime I buy a Demonsouled/Ghost/Third Soul etc, their sequels and other series of yours are firmly on display, whether it be in the recommendation section, similar items section or the other books by this author section. This was not the case with Soul of Sorcery. Indeed it was never recommended to me (in any of the sections) and in fact I had to do a search for it to even find it (even searching under your name, it’s like the fourth or fifth thing on there). It’s almost as if Amazon doesn’t realize this book is part of an ongoing saga.
Maybe it’s just me, but this seems out of place.
(NOTE: I did not use my kindle itself to buy the book, I was on a PC, maybe it’s better on kindle?)
Thanks!
I’ve noticed it takes a while for all the metadata for the book to propagate properly. Like, in a few days, the “Customers Also Bought” list will start showing up on the book page. And then when you search for things, Amazon tends to bring up the results in order of the most popularity/sales. So SOUL OF SORCERY will be at the bottom of the list for a while because it’s new. But as (Lord willing) people buy more copies of the book, it will start showing up higher on the lists, and in the “Customers Also Bought” lists. That’s why I’m scrupulous about getting all the links to the various ebook vendors here at the site – if people can’t find it via the search engine, they can always come here and take a direct link.
Good to see your on top of things! 🙂
And thanks for the explanation, I didn’t know if that was normal for Amazon, I thought something may have been messed up, glad to see it’s not!