Captain's Blog
Ahoy, Critterfolk!
New entry May 03
Critter Notices
New Book from a Critter Member
Awesome new book,
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR SPECULATIVE FICTION OPENINGS,
from a Critter member whose unearthed a shard of The Secret
to becoming a pro writer. Really good piece of work.
"...if you're at all concerned about story openings, you'd be nuts not to read what Qualkinbush has to say." —Wil McCarthy, author of BLOOM and THE COLLAPSIUM
Stayin' Alive
If you want to make a career of SF writing, STAYING ALIVE - A WRITER'S GUIDE by three-time SFWA President Norman Spinrad, published by your Critter Captain's ReAnimus Press, is an indispensable guide to the SF publishing industry by an expert.How to Write SF
Hot off the presses from ReAnimus Press! The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells by Ben Bova, best-selling author and six-time Hugo Award winner for Best Editor. (This is one of the books your ol' Critter Captain learned from himself, and I highly recommend it.)
Book Recommendation
It's like discovering a new Heinlein book:
POINT ULTIMATE
by Star Trek writer Jerry Sohl.
Announcing ReAnimus Press
If you need help making ebooks from manuscripts or print copies—or finding great stuff to read—look no further! An ebook publisher started by your very own Critter Captain. (And with a 12% Affiliate program.) [More]
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FEATURED BOOK
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E-book Optimal Pricing Survey
Background
As authors of ebooks, it's critical for us to know what is the best price to put on an ebook to maximize our income. If you double the price and sell more than 1/2 as many copies, you come out ahead; if you sell less than half you might lose money. Finding out which is best is clearly in your best interest.
This is thus a survey to collect data on how ebook prices relate to unit sales, called the "Elasticity of Demand." (Even if your goal is to build a reader base rather than maximize income, you'll still want to know how pricing relates to sales. Perhaps pricing something too low is actually harmful... the only way to find out is to analyze the data.) There's also the question of pricing vs. length for those who sell articles / short stories vs. books. This information doesn't seem to be available online — at least, I haven't seen it, so please point me to it if you have — thus I decided to collect it for our mutual information.
So please enter your last 6 months sales data. (Or shorter or longer if that's easier for you. The more data the better, but things have been changing so fast that data going back more than a year may not be relevant, so I want to cap it at a year, maximum.) What's important is that you report data from all your titles for the same period of time, even if they sold 0 copies.
Your data are entered anonymously and only include #copies/price/length, so there's nothing personally sensitive.
Thanks for your input!
If you want to elaborate on your thoughts or have other comments to make, please share them here.
[Take Survey | View Survey Results | Discussion Forum]
See Also:
What Can Publishers Do For Authors in a Mostly-ebook World?
Ebook Sales Curve Analysis and Future Projections — Ssssssss Hot!
Question to Readers — What's a Fair Price to Pay for Ebooks?
Axioms in the Future of Publishing — Planning Tips for Writers
Poll: What's the best book ever written?

