I’ve always been curious with the state of the ebook pricing strategy that I’ve been thinking about lately, which I’ll call it the paying-it-forward approach.

In short, it was meant for me to create content and ebooks which I’ll open up for public perusal, placing a premium for a bonus item or for the full book in .pdf format, where the premium would be priced as little as an iPhone or iPad app, and allowing readers to update the price as deem fitting and comfortable while making a purchase on the author’s or ebook’s site.

Quick history: How the muse hit

The paying-it-forward approach was an idea that I had shared with a friend during a chat one evening in early 2011.

I’ve always been a book reading type of person, where one may easily find me tucked away in some bookstore and reading books from cover to end during the short period of time that I had during my dinner break when I was in a retail job in 2009, or had some time to spare while walking around departmental stores in town every now and then.

Books like Jonathan Field’s Career Renegade to many other titles in the Business Management and Marketing section, I would be reading them all in an hour or an hour half that I had before returning to my counter that’s a few minutes walk from the bookstore or meeting up with my friends.

I learned a lot during my reading sessions those days, often finishing them without paying a single cent for most of the titles (I still do pay for a titles such as 37signal’s Rework, to Carmine Gallo’s The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, with some such as Adam Bryant’s The Corner Office, I buy as gifts for friends) that I’ve read.

I’ve too written a couple of ebooks that I had been selling on their respective websites, Breaking the Gambling Addiction, and Doing With Less, with the latter being my better selling title that had reached over 50 copies before I took them off (after less than 6 weeks from launch) from the web in mid 2010.

Mid 2010 till late 2011 had been a period of personal struggles, where I was questioning myself as a writer on the direction my work is to be taking, and one of the things that came to mind was on the pricing strategy for ebooks.

Like how I’ve mentioned earlier, I’ve been learning through books that were made available for public previewing and reading in the bookstores, and while I certainly believe in charging for work done, the way I had been working was contrary to how I had acted out in public, which is in having a barrier of access to a full preview of the ebook, where readers would have to buy now to instantly download and read the books I’ve written. However, having price as a barrier would mean that there are a larger group of people who could be my friends or readers who genuinely wants to read but the “plastic-sealed” cover of a price and gateway prevents one to read more from me.

So I told my friend, Sean, that I want to be able to let others read, while having the option to buy now, or set their own pricing to download the ebooks. I don’t mind if it’s $0 too, as long as they show genuine curiosity to learn, take action in getting the book downloaded from the origin source, and reading and understanding how the phrases were carefully constructed and edited to the final release—I’m all cool for that.

“I’ll be converting my ebooks to a website format … and charging a tiny fee of $0.99, $1.99 or $2.99, whichever is deem suitable for an informational and educational product”

I said “I’ll be converting my ebooks to a website format, allowing users to easily read through from chapter to chapter, and giving the option to purchase the .pdf if they want, and charging a tiny fee of $0.99, $1.99 or $2.99, whichever is deem suitable for an informational and educational product.”

I had recently got myself an iPad (1st generation), and was amazed by how apps were created and placed on the iTunes app store for an extremely affordable price of $0.99, $1.99, $2.99, such as iA Write, or the highest I’ve paid was at $9.99 for a productivity app called Keynote.

It was at that moment when I was thinking whether pricing it at $15 or $27 was too high when I had been reading books from bookshelves without footing a single cent. Would I even buy my own products if I were in a position of having a decent $1,800 income? While there’s a huge group of readers who are clearly able to afford an ebook priced at $27, it was still a pricing amount that I wouldn’t be proud of when I’m doing otherwise.

How do I counter that? First, was to convert ebooks back into a website format. Like a blog that is clearly structured with parts as the site’s categories, with every chapter having it’s dedicated posts and pages.

Of course this would help with the link back to the author’s site, where I’ll still be having links out to featured works and products I’m selling.

Every page would have the option to instantly download the .pdf ebook while having a suggested fee (updatable on user’s end) to pay to download.

My goal is to have an increase of sales volume, allowing me to continue writing and producing content, releasing new titles once a month or a couple of months, as though they are bought like apps in Apple’s iTunes store (I can’t write apps — I don’t own a Mac yet — so I write ebooks).

Hence, the paying-it-forward approach.

How this works

Notice the new sidebar widget on the right that says “Unconditional Giving” and how your giving would allow me to continue writing and creating content for the site?

It was a quick test on how it would possibly work for my ebook sites. Both my ebook sites are now using a fixed price and buy now approach, which means that while the site’s still open for public perusal, the .pdf version still comes at a fixed cost which may not be the best option for readers on the site (eg: reading a book in the bookstore, and having the option to buy the book at retail price).

Sometimes I’ll do some coding in a manner where I’ll let things go live as it is, and then updating them when the inspiration hits.

This post, that has already been a few months in the making, came in timely, as this is the week where I was looking forward to seeing myself get things done on the ebook pricing strategy and paying-it-forward approach.

Looks like it’s about time to take things forward to bring this concept into reality this week and getting things done. Cheers! :)

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What’s your take on the apps-like ebook pricing strategy + paying it forward approach? Know any authors or writers who are already doing this right now? Do reach me at the details below; I’ll love to hear more from you!

Email: thedanielrichard@gmail.com
Twitter: @Daniel_Richard