The Wrong Business Model?

I spend a lot of time on Goodreads. It’s a great place to talk about books, keep lists of what you’ve read and liked, review things you’ve read and read other people’s reviews. It also has some nice forums (e.g. the Great Middle Grade Reads forum) and lots of useful things to help authors put their books in front of their Goodreads friends.

One of those is the Event Invitation. I use it to send round to all my ‘friends’ when my books are free or when other promotions are on, like giveaways. You send your invitations, the recipients get them by email, and are invited to respond whether they are attending (buying) with Yes, No, or Maybe.

This author sends round an invitation to her book’s birthday. I follow it up as the synopsis looks interesting but am slightly peeved that for the long description on Smashwords she’s simply repeated the short description (which was the synopsis in the invitation). Of course I could sample it. I check the price to see if it’s on offer, and I see it’s not. It’s a 5,000 word short story for sale at $2.99.

Now, she may be a very much better author than me, but I sell my 50,000 word, illustrated ebooks for $2.99 and my 5,000 word stories are free to my fans on the blog.

So 5,000 words for $2.99 (and it’s a reworking of another tale, as stated) does not sound like good value to me.