Why are your e-books more expensive than some paperback books?
There are several reasons why our books are a bit more expensive that trade paperback books and I'll give them to in the order of importance.
1. In this country about 75% of all the career novelists are living BELOW the poverty line. Astonished? That means that your favorite best selling writer could be living hand to mouth, worried about the sale of every book, every article, every scrap of writing they write and market. To loose the sale may mean, no groceries that week, or no car repairs, or no rent money. Worse still, most of these writers carry no health insurance, no dental insurance, no eye care plan or prescription help. Much of the cause of this is policy's of major paper publishing houses. Some have policy's that a writer can only sell 3 books a year to them. They often get half the book advance when their work is accepted, average is about 3,000.00 and the other half when the book is published. Their agents will get 15% to 25% of that AND their VERY small royalties some POINT 02 percent. IF they can place 3 books a year many will earn less than $7,000.00 a year after the agent gets their cut and taxes. In short if you are flipping burgers at McDonald you will earn about 5 thousand dollar MORE than the average career novelist. Integrity Tech Publishing was founded to help writers get a more even and steady income. They get HALF the cover price free and clear, each and every month. THAT steady income helps pay their bills and keeps them writing. Very, VERY few writers (2%) make the kind of money you hear associated with writers like Stephen King and D. Steele.
2. The pricing on our e-books has much to do with how much money we can get into the writer's hands. If we offered the books for $3.99 each and the writer got half of that and they sold 30 books a month (We are NOT amazon.com here) that would equal about $60.00 a month. Could you pay YOUR rent with that? Could you even pay your power bill? So our prices are build to SUSTAIN the writer and the normal bills of living.
3. Many people make the leap that because e-books have no paper they cost nothing. This is very false. They are many expenses involved with e-books, cost and maintenance of a domain and web site to market them, market promotion costs, Internet access fees (we use two one for back up) there are software development fees, programmer fees to format, code and protect copyrights on our books, books jacket art or development fees, credit card processing fees and many hours of time to put an e-book up for instant download 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and in supporting every book we sell. We make very little here after all those fees...but the writer makes half on each book, free and clear of any fees.
4. We offer e-book that you cannot get anywhere else, our e-books usually come out within 2 weeks of when the writer finishes writing them...instead of YEARS. We offer a lifetime warranty with each book you buy. If your computer hard drive crashes, burns or gets blown away we replace every e-book you bought from us for free....usually within 24 hours! We replace books you bought on disk or CD for shipping only. We're fast, convenient, reliable and we stand behind every product we sell and at the same time we help writer's pay their bills so they can KEEP writing. Our many satisfied customers think it's a good way to buy books and support their favorite writers.
Can I get an autograph or autographed picture for free?
A few of our writers offer a free autograph download link on their sites, if you would like to get one just go the writer's site and download the autograph for free. Enjoy. For autographed glossy pictures, our writer's cannot send them for free now matter the cause. We get hundreds of requests a month and we have heard all the stories and excuses too...SO creative are the autograph collectors, auctioneers, and charity groups. We are sorry but our writer's can't afford to buy glossy prints (very expensive), shipping envelopes, postage and insurance on these and ship out at a rate of hundreds per month....even to places like Russia. Because we get so many requests we do offer them from some of our writers for $20.00 each, includes shipping in the US only.
We have also gotten requests from fans for business cards and copies of driver licenses. Our writers consider this dangerous and an evasion of privacy. These requests will not be honored.
We also get requests from time to time for autographed book markers. A few of our writer's will honor this request if you send a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope. Check with the writers sites to find out under autographs.
I had trouble with downloading an e-book. Can you help?
Yes, we can help. Click here to get our support page and on-screen help. Customer Support
If you have a question we haven't covered here: e-mail us at: E-Publisher@integritytech.com
