Linking titles in a series

I've noticed today that sales are picking up a tiny bit of The Pumpkin Princess. Not so with The Green Door though. I was on the Kindleboards a few days ago and a poster mentioned that he planned on linking all the books in his series together so that readers could easily find all of the books. Like adding an extra page at the end of one of his books.

I thought this was a great idea as it might not be immediately obvious that it's part of a series. When the third books comes out I will certainly put the titles of the first two books on the info page after the end so that readers know that this is a series.

I have to admit that I've been working my butt off with marketing tPP. I didn't work so hard at marketing when the first book came out. I just hope people like tPP. I really enjoyed writing it. Tomorrow I have a real treat for readers of the blog (if there are any, lol). I hired a great artist to do the artwork for my third book The Winter Wolves and I plan to post the cover tomorrow on this blog! I love it and I'm so excited!

Last chance for a free copy of my book!

Just a last day reminder - after October 20th The Pumpkin Princess will be $0.99 everywhere! Pick up your free copy today at these locations:

Smashwords

Feedbooks

Scribd

And don't forget book one in the series, The Green Door, which is always free at each of those locations!

Some ebooks simply cost too much!

One thing I've been thinking about for a long time in relation to ebooks is price.

Price, I think, matters a great deal when buying an ebook. The large publishers have really gotten out of control when it comes to prices. As a reader I've always felt a little irritated when having to buy mass market paperbacks for nearly $9.00 (yes they are nearly that much now) but when I first bought my Kindle this past summer and started buying George R.R. Martin's Songs of Ice and Fire series I received a shock to my system. They were all $9.99!

Ebooks for $9.99 seem to be the norm from the bigger publishers. I didn't much like that at all, as I see it as quite expensive for a book that isn't a purely physical product requiring wood, ink, printing presses and many people to create said product. But being that Martin is such a great storyteller in my eyes, and he's well known, I paid it and enjoyed the books.

Then his latest book in the series came out.

It was $14.99. I'm thinking: Hot Damn! For real? I'm sorry but that's a rip off! Of course I bought it although I nearly had a stroke while doing it, because I'm not going to ignore the next book in such a great series, but I made a decision after that purchase right then and there: no more ebooks will I purchase beyond $9.99! Even at $9.99, the writer will have to prove to me that he/she is a master storyteller.

Personally, (and this is just my opinion, nothing scientific) I think that an ebook novel shouldn't be more than $6.99 and that's at the upper end of the price range. I think $0.99 is reasonable for short stories and novelettes and novellas, especially if you are an unknown author and $1.99 - $2.99 is reasonable for a novel. Omnibus novel editions can cost $9.99 - $14.99. After all, you are getting a group of novels together. I think well known authors can get away with higher price points on a single work.

But really, charging readers more than $8.99 for an ebook is outright greed! That's just how I feel about it.