I sell copies of my book The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing on Amazon’s website for $60 -that’s the retail price. When I was restocking my electronic inventory this morning, I noticed I had a competitor. This vendor (scroll down) is selling a used copy of my book in “good” condition for $100! Curious, I googled it and found another vendor selling it for $509.81! Evidently my book improves with age.
Most things improve with age, Kathleen – my wife in particular comes to mind – so why not your book? Having read it myself, I think this post speaks poorly of your business skills. Clearly your asking price on Amazon is too low. The book is worth every penny the other guys are asking.
Are there plans for a second edition?
actually, $508 is a ridiculous price.
I personally like the $60 price. It seems expensive at first for such a slim volume (activation barrier), but once you crack it open, the flood of information makes it seem like a good deal (thermodynamically favorable, if I’m to stick with the chemical reaction metaphor here.)
Basically. if you raise the price, you’re going to lose a lot of customers who are skeptical at first–and those are the ones who need it most, right? Of course, if you’re getting more orders than you can handle, that’s different, and you should raise it for.
hmmm.. Now that I’m thinking in terms of activation barriers, I’m wondering if you couldn’t do more to introduce people to your book (this blog is a great marketing tool, of course.):
Can you have Amazon post some of the particularly mind-bendingly informative pages from the book, so people can SEE how valuable it is? Or donate your book to the libraries of all the major fashion cities, so unaware cost-conscious DE’s stumble across it. Lending out the book is a great advertisement–I borrowed it from a friend and quickly realized I absolutely had to own it.
oh yeah, and all you readers out there who haven’t visited Amazon.com to rate the book–go do it! Maybe 200 5-star reviews will look more enticing than 26!
Slim volume? It is twice the page count of other books in the market and the word count is roughly 50 times higher than the closest competitor! Unlike the other books (5×7), it’s 8.5″ X 11″ and set in columns (dramatically raising word count). I couldn’t have made the margins any smaller. Josh, the version I’ve been selling is the third edition.
Jinjer: About the Amazon selling thing…really long story but I have to give them huge discounts to get into that program and only the big publishers can do that. Micro and self publishers like me can’t afford it. I tried it out for awhile but I lost quite a bit of money on the deal.
I’m glad I found the $60 version before faced with the decision to invest in the $508 version, lol! I’ve seen copies of my early books range from $100 to $.37, depends on where you look. I only wish I had asked/paid to have your book shipped Priority rather than media mail… can’t wait for my copy to arrive.
The obvious thing on the copy for $508 is that they meant $50.80. Who knows, someone might still spring for it?!
Looking forward to the new version – even if all it does is consolidate the old stuff plus stuff posted here, it’ll be well worth it.
We’ve had your book for about 4 years now and I’d gladly pay full price for an updated copy. I was reading it just the other night and it answered the question I asked a few weeks ago (I have to read things a couple of times before it sticks) about interfacing being smaller and why. It’s on pg. 179 if anyone missed it. I noticed that the index was missing the term interfacing, will that be updated in the next edition?