I've been noticing that a lot of authors that I like publishing Novella's. It's harder for me to get into these works because of the cost. If they were priced right, I would probably purchase them.
Case in point,
Neferet's Curse: A House of Night Novella by P.C. Cast. P.C. Cast is well known author and published a slew of books.
This Novella is 160 pages and Amazon has it "on sale" for $10.39 as of today. The retail pricing is $12.99
See, if a normal paperback book is $7.99 and is on average 350 pages, that's $.0228 per page. So, a Novella would be $ 3.65 for the 160 pages like the one from P.C. Cast. Of course, I have no idea how they calculate the price, but coming from a logical/data stand point, it seems a little more fair. A great example is Feral Magic by Robin D. Owens (one of my favorite authors) who has also writtens tons of books. Her Novella is 96 pages and is only $2.99 for the Kindle version. That's $.0311 per page. This one I will probably end of getting once I have some of my other books read.
What I'm say is that if authors want more readers, more sales, then their
publishers need to be a bit more realistic. The pricing structure needs to be amended to something us readers can afford to pay for these smaller installments that we would like to read. And yes, of course that means that the authors would get less per sale - but maybe it would even out in the end??
Now I'm not saying that authors don't have a lot of stress, it's not easy to be creative and write well. I know that they have dead lines and normal every day life as well. And I would totally love to read many of the novella's that I am seeing published lately.
To me, especially with how fucked up the economy has been for the last several years, I have been very careful (aka frugal) in my book purchases. I use my local (and state wide) library system for most of my reading needs. When I do purchase books, I try to get the most bang for my buck. I will buy used books through Amazon (those priced less than $1.00 and have $3.99 shipping or free shipping) or locally at
Wonder Books. For instance, I just book 7 books for $28.86 which is an average of $4.12 per book and that was because there was some tax added in. My other criteria are: Most amount of pages, most recently related books read, favorite authors, something I've been waiting & wanting to read.
Also, it's not very often I buy hard backs anymore, unless I can get them on sale or 2nd hand and a whole lot less in price. Unless it's a book that has a ton of pages and is one of my favorite authors and I've been dying to read it. Though, now that I have a Kindle Fire, I will look at the Kindle price and might get it that way. Or I will wait.
I honestly doubt it's the writer/author that's putting the price on these things. It's the publisher and merchant. They need to be shaken so that their sense or reality can be resettled into their brains. That way we can all win. Less price = more sales = happy readers = more sales = more $$ for author/publisher/merchant. At least, that's my theory and opinion. I could be wrong...
Books that I ordered through Amazon: All purchased based on the Best Price and Free Shipping from Amazon.
Free Fall by Laura Anne Gilman
