There are a lot better ways to do it than simply marking your first year or two’s work at .99c for novels. You could, for example, do the legwork of sending out a few hundred review copies to bloggers. You could chose one or two to record as audio podcasts. You could blog one, and include a purchase link at the end of every chapter for those readers who can’t stand to wait through the cliffhangers.

Really, there are dozens of things you can do to drum up interest in a way that will attract people who like to engage (what Gladwell calls “the mavens”)–and at the beginning, particularly, those are the people you want. They’re the ones that talk about books to their friends, that mention them in blogs, that leave reviews, etc.

Yeah, it can take a bit longer to build this way, but in that build time you’re also (I hope) writing more books, so that as the audience grows you have the material to feed their appetite. You want them to develop a taste for you, so they’ll come back around in six months and see if the next installment in your series, or the next standalone book, is out yet. And if it’s not, you want them to be disappointed, and email you asking where it is. THAT is how an audience is built.

You surely will catch some of those same people competing on price. But not a lot of them.

Now, if you’ve got a lot of books out in a series, or better, in multiple series, setting the first or second volume to a deep discount can be a great attention-grabber, on the dope peddler model. Your existing fans decide to give the new series a try *now*, because the cost of entry is low, rather than putting it off until they finish their current to-read pile. That can work very well.

Or a holiday sale, or a short-term special. That can work too.

But if price is ALL that you’re using to distinguish, if the only reason you’re lowballing is to “get a foot in the door,” then I suspect you’re just spitting into the wind (and before you mention Locke or Hocking, remember that they were both doing a LOT more to attract attention than just lowballing. And in Locke’s case, he was using the lowball as a rehtorical device in a strategic way, he wasn’t just setting a low price to get his foot in the door).

For what it’s worth
–Dan

How much are albums on iTunes? Oh, right. $9.99.

I have no doubt that we’ll always have publishers. I do believe they’ll look much different ten years from now than they do now.

The problem for publishers is that in order to pay large advances, they need high wholesale prices. They’ll never be able to compete on overhead with an indie writer, even if that writer is hiring some services. The publishers’ brand is of value with bookstores, newspapers, reviewers, etc. With consumers, it’s the author’s brand, as you mention.

Will they disappear altogether? Maybe. Or Maybe they’ll have to get more realistic about pricing, and have to cut the fat in their industry so they can get a product to the consumer at a price the consumer wants to pay. All of this is coming down to technology rendering the industry obsolete in many ways – and that results in a loss of pricing power. Simply put, authors aren’t going to want deals where they give up a massive chunk to the publisher if all he’s doing is pretty much the author could do with a little effort – cover, format, edit. IT’s the marketing where they might have a believable advantage, but as their margins drop to near nothing, even the marketing advantage will fall away, and what we’ll be left with is an environment where building the author’s brand as a quality voice will command the higher bucks. IT will be more equitable, and more merit driven. Everyone wins – the consumers, the authors, the contractors – just not the publishers. So they’ll have to find a different model, or go the way of the horse and buggy. This is all good, by the way. Industries do require seismic shifts in order to advance. IT’s never easy or pretty, but it always inevitably good.