Thursday, April 5, 2012

What's Free?

I'm in the last steps. This journey is so close to finished. Everything is falling into place, changing and molding into what it has to be. I'm literally a click away from publishing (although I still need those URLs and stuff up first…) but suddenly I pause. My expectations over the last month have been shattered and re-worked and forced to given in here and take more there, but this last give makes me stop. It's about price.

It seems that I can't put my Kindle up for free on Amazon… The lowest I can go is $0.99. After all the angsting I did over motives, and deciding that publishing my book would not be about money I find it very annoying that this is a snag. I had wanted to put my book up for free for the first month, just to let it get out there and clearly say, "look, this isn't about money for me, it's about communicating the hope freely given to me." But now I'm thwarted…

I'm gonna Do more research before I give up, but for now it looks like the beginning price is gonna have to be $0.99.

4 comments:

  1. But really, what is the value of 99 cents? What will 99 cents buy? Your book is practically free and as accessible as if it was free. Anyone who has a Kindle has 99 cents that they can spend with absolutely no second thoughts, so it isn't as if the money will keep anyone from buying your book.
    I'd pay it!

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  2. If you want to distribute your book completely free of charge, you could just post it to your blog (a few published others who have done that) or upload a PDF to some kind of file sharing site. However, as far as price goes, 99 cents is perfectly reasonable for a full length, unpublished novel. People will download an unknown but interestingly titled indie song for the same price and only get a few minutes of enjoyment out of it.

    Also, do you have a publishing contract of some variety or is this entirely independently published? If there is no contract and you can submit the same manuscript several places, consider sending it to -- http://www.narrativemagazine.com -- They specialize in unpublished fiction, and once a work has been published there, it can be resubmitted to places like -- http://podcastle.org/ -- Both sites are free for readers (donation/subscription supported), but pay their authors close to industry standard.

    Either way - good luck Gabe :)

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  3. I'm so excited and proud! You're amazing, Captain! ^____^

    .99 cents sounds fine to me, especially if it's Kindle's minimum price. Plus, I think you'd deserve, at the very least, a few cents back for all the hard work you've put into this novel!

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  4. I got my test copy on my Kindle. I'm so proud of you I could burst! It's amazing and I can't wait to read it!

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