On New Years Eve I tweeted a book recommendation for Digging Into WordPress and 5 minutes later four of my followers had paid $27 for a PDF file (one actually bought the ebook/print combination for $67).

Throughout the past year we’ve witnessed heated debates over the issue of ebook pricing. Publishers want to charge as much as they can for new releases, whatever the format. Meanwhile, Amazon has pretty much set the standard by pricing the Kindle ebook editions of most hardcover and trade paperbacks at $9.99 or less. As a result, consumers increasingly expect ebooks to be cheaper than their print counterparts.

So, what changed on New Years Eve?

After thinking it over I’ve decided that nothing changed. Rather, I think the incident serves as a reminder of some basic marketing principles that apply to ebooks just as much as they do to print books. These are principles that will ultimately determine how much publishers can expect to charge for an ebook.

First, I should note that the book in question is an in-depth software guide. It seems unlikely that I would have had the same response from my Twitter followers if I’d tweeted a recommendation for a $27 e-novel. In other words, I’m not sure my New Years Eve experience tells us much about ebook pricing for trade fiction. Regardless, there are still other valuable lessons to be learned from the experience that apply to all books.

• Trusted recommendations sell books. This has always been true, but recommendations take on added importance in a media landscape saturated with a glut of digital content. This applies to all books by the way, but, obviously, if you’re going to charge a premium for an ebook, then trusted recommendations carry extra weight. Twitter, by the way, happens to be an incredibly efficient environment for recommendations to spread.
• A book isn’t expensive if it provides real value.. Consumer perception of value is influenced by any number of factors. In the case of Digging Into WordPress, the book’s authors provide value by bringing readers comprehensive and up to the minute coverage of a fast moving technology, combined with the promise of free updates for life. Further, the book is sold without DRM, thus assuring consumers that the book won’t self-destruct at some future date. Compare this to most print editions of WordPress books that sell for around $30, and are typically a point release behind by the time they hit the bookstores. It’s pretty clear which product provides consumers with more value.
• Free sells. By providing a free sample that included the complete table of contents and a sample chapter, would-be customers are able to see exactly what information is covered in the book, the quality of the writing, and the quality of the design (the book looks great, by the way). By the time I had skimmed through the sample chapter, the authors had a sale. It is extremely unlikely that I would have paid $27 for an ebook without first reviewing a sample chapter.
• Consumers are willing to pay for information they can get for free. Not only is the web full of excellent WordPress resources, the authors of this particular book have made much of the book’s content available for free on the book’s blog. Yet consumers will gladly pay for the convenience of having quality content aggregated in a nicely formatted package that provides a great user experience.

Disclosure: I’ve linked to Digging Into WordPress using an affiliate code. As a general policy I only recommend products I’ve actually purchased at full price. I only recommend products that are exceptional in some way. Digging Into WordPress meets all of those requirements. If you’re looking for a WordPress book I give Digging Into WordPress my highest recommendation.

The Oxford Media Works team was fortunate enough to attend the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference in San Jose last week. The event was designed to immerse publishers in the future. This was the inaugural TOC conference, and we have every reason to believe that it has already established itself as the premier conference for publishing industry technology (never mind the fact that it may very well be the only conference in that category, it was still a fine event nonetheless).

Our coverage the TOC conference can be found on both Medialoper and Booksquare:

• Book Publishers Meet The Future — An overview of the conference and some of the challenges currently facing publishers.
• DRM for Books: Will Publishers Learn Anything from the Music Industry’s Mistakes? — A look at Digital Rights Management as it applies to the publishing industry.
• Connecting Books With Readers: A Failure — Despite the promise of Print On Demand and streamlined inventory management systems, publishers still have challenges getting books into the hands of avid readers.
• Hansel and Gretel Were Right: Number 99 in Our Series on Search — If publishers need to learn one thing it should probably be that Google is not the enemy. Better to work with all search engines than to try to build your own.

Unfortunately, it sometimes appears that the publishing world at large is oblivious to these new opportunities. If publishers are taking advantage of new media and the social web, we aren’t hearing much about their efforts. And yet, something tells me that there must be innovators out there who are blazing the trail that the rest of the industry will soon follow.

Over on our Booksquare blog we’ve just put out a call for examples of innovative uses of new media in the publishing industry. If you’re a publisher, author, agent, or publicist, and you’re doing something interesting and unique online we’d like to hear more about it.

We hope to use our findings in a series of posts that will highlight new opportunities for those in the publishing industry. Depending on what we uncover we may also include examples in our upcoming report “New Media Best Practices for Publishing Industry Professionals”.

Let’s take these in order.

• No Website – There is absolutely no excuse for an author not to have a website in this day and age. In fact, a website is the bare minimum required. Perhaps in the past, there was a certain barrier to entry when it came to the web, but, let’s be frank, even ten years ago, it was so minimal that leaping it was easy.

  I have heard all the excuses: too busy writing to play on the web, not technically-oriented, website? what’s that. If you’re too busy to promote your work, then you’re not taking your career seriously. In addition to free web space offered by service providers, there are also free blog accounts (see: Blogger by way of example) and pages offered by the Author’s Guild. You have options.

  Being offline is not a good way to win fans and influence buyers.

• Publisher-Presence Only – I think it’s great when publishers feature their authors on their websites (though, I’ll confess, this whole idea has much room for improvement; that’s another article). But — and this is really important — publishers aren’t interested in promoting the work of other publishers. No matter if you write for one house or ten, you still need to maintain your own dedicated webspace.

  Let’s use author Linda Howard as an example. Howard has a page on the Simon & Schuster website. And space at Random House. Oddly enough, LindaHoward.com is still available — this, by the way, must be particularly irritating for Howard fans who assume she owns her name; the placeholder site is an auction site that takes forever to load and creates a negative impression of the author.

  So far, Linda Howard fans are being sold the books they probably already own or forced to endure the world’s slowest-loading page. What they’re missing is a comprehensive look at the author’s work and the personal touch that tells a reader “Hey, I’m so glad you like my work”. Given that this is an author with a long career whose early work is highly valued by her readers, her web presence is sadly lacking.

• Toy Websites – One of the reasons we like to steer authors, especially authors who don’t have a lot of promotional money, to blogs is because it’s pretty easy to find a professional-looking blog template. In the past week, I have encountered authors who believe black backgrounds with dark-colored fonts constitute good design. These are authors who are indulging some bizarre fantasy, not authors who take their websites seriously. Ditto for the authors who substitute varying font sizes, styles, and colors for good design.

  Good visual design is as much an art as good writing. Not everyone can do it, and while I can appreciate that there are DIY authors out there, I would humbly suggest that saving money by creating bad design is a potential career-killer. Web design has evolved significantly over the past decade, and while there’s a certain charm to retro looks in other markets, the web isn’t looking backward and feeling nostalgic for lame design.

  Then there are the authors who haven’t updated their sites in months (or years). Or they throw up just the minimal amount of content, assuming that will satisfy today’s readers (much less Google, which lives on content). Writers have a unique advantage over other artists: an innate ability with words. Stop treating your website like a toy and use it to engage readers!

When it comes to spending promotional dollars, the web remains the most cost-effective choice. However, even free marketing requires effort. It’s your career — what are you doing to help yourself?

There were two aspects of the conference that created a big impression on us. First, he sheer number of books being pitched to book buyers (as opposed to consumers), reviewers, and anyone who slows their pace or catches someone’s eye. Second, the rather last-century relationship the publishing industry has with new media, including, oddly, the Internet.

With sessions on exploiting RSS technology (which was more of an RSS 101 class), basic podcasting (we heard from one attendee — a long-time literary podcaster — that she had to stop herself from grabbing the microphone and telling it like it is), and basic blogging, it felt a bit like a conference being held five years ago. The so-called “2.0 Revolution” seminars — which should have been required — were sparsely attended.

RSS, podcasting, and blogging are key components of building online buzz, but they are foundations. What is needed in the publishing industry is a willingness to step outside the traditional venues (ads in the New York Times for bestselling authors? Not the best use of limited advertising funds) to try new things. For example, the folks at Unbridled Books are experimenting with a serialized novel and will be launching a series of podcasts later this year.