Marketing research!

[alexandraerin]

The Gift of the Bad Guy is the first installment in The Gifters Saga, and also the first e-book I'm going to be publishing under a new imprint using a new combination of marketing concepts I've been putting together. It's a small book of a bit under one hundred pages, it will be available in both PDF and EPUB, and it will carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license. My current plans are to launch the book on March 14th. There are some details I need to iron out between now and then, and participating in this survey will help me do so.

Please note that the "would like to know more" choices refer specifically to "before making up my mind to buy it." If you're already mostly sure you're going to buy it but this has not blunted your desire to know more, please choose the result that signifies your willingness to purchase.

[Poll #1679177]

You can find more information (including a teaser snippet) by checking out the tag I created for the story.

To explain the concept mentioned in the third question: I've hit upon the idea of an "Author Appreciation Edition" to standardize the process for people who wish to give a little bit more, and also give them some recognition. Each AAE would include a personalized acknowledgment up front (your name and my thank-you, or someone else's name and a custom dedication if it's a gift) and would be individually numbered. The numbers would be for ego purposes, so you know where you were in line. As a DRM-free electronic document, your copy would be as unique or as ubiquitous as you want it to be.

Copies of the book sold after an AAE are purchased would include the buyer's name in a list of credits at the back, save for purchasers who wish to remain anonymous. This might not apply to copies of the books purchased through other venues/stores. I'll have to see how easy it is to update the manuscript in those cases.

If there's sufficient interest in this plan for me to actually do the AAE copies, there will be a pre-order period for them. People who pre-order will have the certainty that their names will appear in every copy in existence.

Feel free to use the comments of this post to give more specific feedback.

Comments

[andy9306.livejournal.com]

About the whole "right to freely share copies" thing; I don't think it's a good idea.

You're trying something new with "The Gift of The Bad Guy" and I think that going with a model that allowed free distribution would kind of undercut that. It'd be like offering a free product with the option to give you money in appreciation, which you do with your other works. Of course those who are really super interested in getting a free copy will anyway, and sharing between friends/family will also occur anyway so I'm not sure what that does to my argument.

For clarity: I'm not saying that sharing free copies has to be a bad thing, just that if you are going to try a pay-for-product model that maybe you should try it. Damn, that sounds patronizing. Just my take on the matter, looking forward to reading the book!

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

There are all kinds of ironic jokes about how I'm setting up The Gift of the Bad Guy. Offering a $1 e-book with no DRM and telling people not to copy/share it would be a bridge too far.

[luke-licens.livejournal.com]

Consider what you'd have to go through to find that free copy, though. Is the time and effort you spend hunting for it worth less than the dollar you'd spend to get it right now?

Look at the target audience. While I'd expect fans to share with friends and family to get them interested, the folks who enjoy her work are much more likely to post a link to her store (and maybe an excerpt) on their blogs than to let people leech their bandwidth by downloading unlimited free copies.

Granted this discounts madmen and disgruntled ex readers paying for it and sharing it out of spite, but you really can't factor those into the equation.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Sure you can.

I plan to get those folks to pay me a dollar for the honor of being my guerrilla marketers for the sequel and my other subsequent releases.

[brenda-ea.livejournal.com]

Question: Is this only going to be offered in electronic form, or will there be a physical book offered as well?

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

My initial plan was no. This is a 90ish page book, and the price inefficiencies of limited print/print-on-demand only get worse with smaller books. The Gift of the Bad Guy is intended to be the first installment of a trilogy that when put together might make a respectable novel-sized story, which I plan on doing up right with a proper cover design and all... and hopefully being able to get a better price for it by having a bunch of readers who'll pre-order a copy.

If you tell me that don't want to wait and you're willing to pay in the neighborhood of $7.50* for a printed copy that uses the intended-for-e-book artwork on a plain cover I guess it won't hurt anything for me to set one up. I'd feel weird about it, though.

*The approximate price I'd have to charge to get the same 90 cents I'd get selling a copy of the e-book.

[calianissene.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely be interested in an AAE, if it were about $5.

Question; are you planning on putting up the first chapter as a free "ebook" download beforehand? I have an android and would like to figure out how/know for sure that it works before buying an AAE.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

I absolutely am!

And I would love to hear form you how it works for you and if there are any adjustments needed. I think you should be fine because my LG is running Android and it all looks good on it, but the more people with the more different hardware who check out the preview, the better I'll feel about launching it.