First:
The Silver Ninja: Indoctrination book trailer will be released on Thursday, February 27th, 12am EST. I am looking forward to reading your comments and seeing your likes!
As you readers may know. I recently dropped the price of The Silver Ninja to 99 cents as an e-book. There’s a few reasons for this decision and I wanted to share with you why the drastic price change.
Originally, the book started at $2.99, which is actually quite cheap compared to what a full length e-book usually costs. I priced it low because it was my first novel and I didn’t feel comfortable charging full price for a debut book. It was my first time working with an editor, first time getting a book published, first time doing everything. For some authors, they get lucky and their first book turns out spectacular. But for moi, who has little experience in writing and publishing, it didn’t feel right to charge more than $2.99.
Book 2 however, is a change in the entire writing and editing process. The writing style is so drastically refined from the first book, you might be jarred into thinking that I didn’t even write it! Oh, but I did, and I have the edit logs and backup saves to prove it. Which brings me back to pricing. $2.99 was nice for a debut novel, but book 2 is a lean, mean, fighting machine. I have to increase the price for the second book if I want to make my money back. As much as I enjoy writing these stories for you all, I do not enjoy losing thousand’s of dollars in hiring creatives to help me produce it. The sales I made on book 1 at most, bought me a lunch date for my girlfriend and I. I’m talking about a fast food lunch date, not even chain restaurant dinner date. Now, if I was cranking out short stories every couple of months, well that price point would sort of be do-able.
But I’m not doing short stories. I’m doing full length novels that take at least a full year for me to write and an extra four months of editing with multiple passes and physical proof checks.
$2.99 is for novellas and short stories. Not 90,000+ full length novels.
Book 2 is going to be an e-book for $9.99 USD, paperback will still be $14.99 and hardcover is TBD, possibly around $25.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s a big price increase Wilmar! What’s up bro?”
I’ll tell you!
$2.99 was a good start for me to learn how the marketplace works for book selling. When to keep it exclusive to Amazon and when to start branching out to Smashwords etc. It gave me a good sense of the types of devices people will use and what kind of issues I need to be aware of when writing the book. Since book #2 is coming out, I’ve dropped the price to .99cents ONLY for book 1.
Books 2, 3, 4, etc. Will NOT be dropped to 99cents when I release future titles. They will be more in line with the marketplace and average prices for books from popular authors.
The truth is ladies and gents, I can’t make my money back on $2.99 unless Silver sells like gangbusters. Though I am confident Silver 2 is significantly improved, it’s not a guarantee that it will sell better than the first one. The writing quality needs to sell itself, but you folks are the judges of that.
However, I will say that $9.99 will be well worth the price considering what I’ve done to make this into a quality product.
1.) I’ve hired more artists to deliver even more high quality artwork.
2.) I hired a brand new editor who has completely kicked my butt in editing the manuscript.
3.) I’m taking my time with the editing so that there are no issues with plot holes, character inconsistencies, and minimal to no purple prose (flowery writing).
4.) I will be offering a hardcover edition and will be actively searching for ways to create merchandise for you to get your hands on.
5.) The characters will hopefully be much more likeable and will be less prone to melodramatics. The action scenes alone are going to wet your pants!
6.) Your purchases allow me to continue writing more books, plain and simple. If you enjoy the stories and enjoy the characters, I have a few more books I’d love to write and get into your hands.
But don’t take my word for it. Once the editing is completed, I will post book samples so that you can decide if I’ve truly improved in my writing or not.
(REMINDER: You ever noticed how the physical copy of my book says -LIMITED EDITION- on the upper left? Yeah, that’s not for show. If you have a copy, take good care of it.)
Now, I will potentially be doing some blog tours. So I’m not going to talk about the process of creating the second book too much until after I make some guest posts. In the meantime, I really think you should check out that book trailer on February 27th. The link will be posted on facebook, twitter, google+, and any social media I’m a part of.
I have been waiting months to show you this trailer and I cannot wait to get the book in your hands, very, very soon.
