Going Flat Out, Just To Stand Still…

I’m having a manic time at the moment.  All good, I hasten to add!  But unfortunately, my being busy is not conducive to producing frequent blog posts…

Like so many writers, I don’t really earn very much from my books and, if I’m honest, earning money is not the primary motivation for what literary work I do.  This is a good job, because the financial return per hour of effort is, let’s just say, very small.

The upshot of all of this is that I have to do other things to keep ‘bread on the table’ and that’s what’s been consuming so much of my time over the last couple of weeks…  You know how it is.  Priorities have to be set.  Hobbies and pastimes sometime have to go on the back-burner…

Hmmm… Writing this has made me think about a conundrum about book pricing that I’ve been meaning to raise on here for a little while.

The conundrum is: if I’m not financially motivated, why do I put a price on my books?  Well, I admit, I’ve wrestled with this choice on a regular basis.  However, one strange thing I noticed when making Firebird available for free, as part of some short Amazon promotions, was that it drew an audience which included some readers who then seemed to treat the work as being of less value than if it had carried an, albeit small, price tag.  Worse: readers were picking up the book because it was free, and not because they were attracted to the premise.  Strange but true…, and with some disappointingly narrow-minded consequences.

So, whilst Firebird’s free promo’s have attracted a raft of new readers, many of whom have enjoyed the story, this activity did come at a cost.  Not least, that writing must remain, at least for the time being, firmly prioritised behind my other forms of income.

Value… what a strange, amorphous, and ultimately abstract concept…!