Book-Diva

Doing the Limbo with Book Prices....How Low can They Go?

In the past week, a major battle has broken out on book prices between both traditional retailers as well as online sellers.  It all started between Amazon and Walmart.  Now, Target has joined in.

First, Walmart went down to $10. Amazon followed.

Then, Walmart went down to $9. Amazon followed.

Walmart dropped by a penny to $8.99.  Amazon followed.

Then Target matched both of them.

This makes me wonder exactly how much people value books.  Even the main channels for selling books are underselling one another more and more.  To me, it seems like the ebook format may be the way of the future.  The economics just seem to work better for authors, who are not lucky to be one of the few authors chosen by the large publishers with a whole marketing staff.

Book-Promotion.....Creating a Lending Library

I came across this interesting post from Stephen Elliot at the Huffington Post, who used the concept of a lending library to promote his new book, The Adderall Diaries.  He managed to get 400 readers of his pre-published book and to increase his number of reviews prior to publication.  Now, he was responsible for recruiting readers, managing the shipping of the books to new readers, and tracking all of the communications.

On evaluating his Lending Library, Stephen wrote:

"What is it a success? Absolutely. 400 people signed up for advance copies. It enabled me to interact directly with people who read The Adderall Diaries, which is incredibly fulfilling for an author. One reader started a facebook group called "I Read an Advance Copy of The Adderall Diaries."

The Lending Library itself got written up in a bunch of publications, which was surprising because I wasn't doing it as a marketing stunt. I was doing it because I wanted people to read my book. But maybe that's the same thing. I think of "marketing" as something you do for someone else. Wanting to share your art is something that predates the term and probably goes back to cave drawings.

I ended up doing a lot of interviews and people wrote reviews of the book before the book was available. HTMLGIANT even hosted a conversation about the book. Some people told me this was a bad idea. I was getting too much press at a point when people couldn't yet purchase the book. I think the jury is still out on that. But it seemed OK to me. I was glad people were reviewing the book in advance. I figure when a book comes out people talk about it for a month, but you have four months before that happens to initiate a conversation.

When I was told I should do a large book tour, rather than going from bookstore to bookstore I sent a note to the 400 advance readers of the book. Now I'm doing a cross-country tour of readings and events primarily in people's homes."

Given his experience in creating a physical lending library, this might be an interesting experiment to try using ebooks.  Has any one tried this?