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I suspect whether the price point is $2.99 or $1.99 (or $1.98, so it’s like 2 $0.99 shorts) is irrelevant.
I think the pertinent idea to the doubles diced two different ways, so each of the shorts therein are the lead in one of the versions, is that that way you get to have two different titles and different cover images. So one title or cover image may draw set A in, and the other may draw set B in, and that A union B will be larger than either A or B.
Also … this way people interested in story 1 are buying story 2 as well, even if they might not have bought story 2 on its own, thus getting you more revenue.
Also … even if a given buyer would have bought story 1 and story 2 each at $0.99… If X buys #1 and #2 @ $0.99 each, you get $0.99/3 * 2 or something like that. So, about $0.66. On the other hand, if X buys #1&2 together for $1.98, don’t you get more like $1.98 / 2 … so about $0.99? So that way they’re paying the same but Amazon takes a smaller cut.
Put yet another way, if you offer the double both ways, people get to buy the one they prefer, so you’re serving the customer better by giving them the choice.
Seems like good business to me. 🙂
The problem lies in just how clear you make it that they are *BOTH* the same stories, simply presented in a different order and/or with a different cover. In addition, I (at least) have come to expect something of a quantity discount. If it’s two shorts individually priced at $0.99, I wouldn’t expect the paired book to be priced much more than $1.89, especially if both have already been through the e-publishing mill once. I’d also tend to prefer more in one book – 3-5 pieces the size of Odin’s Outpost (20K words, IIRC), or 10-12 shorter pieces (8-10K words). I really feel like the mainstream publishers have been over-pricing books for quite some time, gaining a certain amount of extra profit simply from the fact that they were the gatekeepers – and I think the huge spread of self-e-publishing is going to drive those prices way, way down.
Pricing writing is kind of tricky. If you go by the word, you encourage writers to simply ramble on, much like J. K. Rowling or Tom Clancy has done in their later novels. Yet, done properly, a longer work does convey more value than a shorter one – not everyone is a Hemingway who can pack a whole story in “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”
This is, to some degree, where the mainstream system of hardbacks, then tradebacks, then pocketbooks actually worked fairly well. Time does, in a way, decay the value of words slightly in general, in that there are those desperate to read the next book, and willing to pay for the privilege of doing so as soon as possible, while others may be interested, but are in no hurry, and then there’s the crowd who’s not interested at all unless it’s so cheap it’s an impulse buy. I suspect we’ll see this start to happen eventually in the e-book market – put it up initially at $4.99 (I honestly would prefer to never even *SEE* an e-book, other than certain specialized technical works, go higher than $4.99), then drop to $4.49 after maybe 6 months or a year, then down to $3.99, $1.49, $0.99. I’m not sure of the math on that, as the opportunity for collector’s editions – after all, if I have a copy of Ravenwood in e-format, I can replace the new cover in what I download with the old cover, if I can find and download that, using Calibre. However, I’m rather certain the market of new writer/publishers will experiment and find out what works – and likely, what works *best* quickly enough. It may well be that e-books get discounted no more than 10% over their lifespan.
However, while it’s working out – we’re going to see experiments like this of the doubles, which really does to me look like it’s *intended* to trick buyers into buying the same material twice. I can see the argument of it attracting different groups of people – though I suspect the cross-over between SciFi readers and Fantasy readers is more common that Dr. Lowell seems to feel – and if it does attract new readers to cross-over, that’s a great thing. The problem is to make sure one doesn’t get the reputation of trying to trick new readers. It’s not as bad as Caesar’s Wife, but even still…
Yes, of course you need to be clear about what’s included in each so as not to trick readers. Perhaps even right in the title on Amazon, e.g. “, with bonus story: ” and vice versa.
It doesn’t make sense to do the “doubles” idea with stories already published as singles.
I don’t think, however, that you have to place the price for 2 otherwise unreleased stories lower than 2x what you *would* release a single for. I think $1.99 or $1.98 is below most people’s impulse threshold, and I don’t think there’s anything immoral about doing it. That said, one could price a “double” at $1.89 and still get a bigger cut than from 2 x $0.99, as I understand it. It’s up to the author, not us, to set the price, though. 🙂
Selling 3-5 stories, rather than 2, can also work, but I suspect the advantage of the “double” idea is that you can do it as “Story 1 (with bonus story 2)” and set the price low enough for an e-book impulse buy, low enough that you *could* charge it for just story 1… but look! You get two. With $4.99 being on the higher end for (independent) e-books, selling 5 stories for $4.99 may be less successful.
That said: IANAMP (I Am Not A Marketing Person).
That’ll teach me to use angle brackets (lt/gt) to denote placeholders in comments. =)
That first paragraph was meant (modulo bracket substitution) to end with:
Right – but personally, I think you should go the extra step and say “Warning: These two stories are also being sold as a pair in the collection FooBar”.
What I’m somewhat worried about is the “Oh, a new Nathan Lowell book!” “Oh, wait! I’ve read these stories already! They were over in that other book with a different cover! What a rip-off!”