Do you like your space battles with a liberal sprinkling of humor and healthy dose of emotional gut punches?
If you do then the X-Wing series of novels is for you. I cannot suggest highly enough this serious of books, but the news today that I saw via Tosche Station regarding the price of a new bundle for the X-Wing Series did surprise me a bit.
Ever since the Star Wars catalog of novels went digital on June 28, 2011 riding the ebook wave, we have seen a standardization of Star Wars novel pricing. For books that debuted or had an paperback edition printed their ebook price became a standard $7.99.
As with everything in life their are trade-offs, now we have all the Star Wars novels in digital versions however this means that you are actually probably paying more now then you had if you were an early adopter and purchased what Star Wars novels where digital before June 28th. For example in 2010 when only certain books where being offered as ebooks, I ordered Kindle editions of all the Legacy of the Force novels.The Legacy of the Force series came in two bundles, Books 1-4 for $13.80 and Books 5-9 for $9.99. A total of $23.79 for nine novels. This was a tremendous value and something I jumped at because the paperback entries that I have for that series are pretty roughed up after multiple readings.
While I understand that since 2010 there has been a revolutionary change in the publishing industry and the fact that now publisher's must make a larger share of their profits from ebooks, but the price of this bundle still feels a bit high to me.
The X-Wing series began in 1996 and the latest book in the series (until Mercy Kill's release) was published in 1999. So these books are between 13-16 years old. A price point of around $40 seems like a much more reasonable cost for a bundle given the contents. If you are going to have such a high price fore the entire series, then I think you separately need to put a discount on the solo release of the first novel in the series, Rogue Squadron and sell it for $1.99 instead of $7.99. Create a real incentive for those unfamiliar with the series to begin reading the books and allow them to decide whether it is worth buying. I think you would get a lot more sales with a $1.99 test drive and $40 series price then you would with a $7.99 test drive and $56.99 price. It is true that the ebook cover price of $7.99 for each novel individually would total $71.91, so it is true that you are getting a value. It strikes me that unless you have read the books before a price point of $56.99 is going to be cost prohibitive for many readers or parents of younger readers.
SOURCES: Random House, Tosche Station, and Roqoo Depot
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