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Buying by the Chapter

This NYT’s article on ebooks by Stephen Johnson is very good.  The bit near the end where he talks about books being sold by the chapter is interesting.  Not sure how that works for fiction if you are already giving away the first chapter.  It makes more sense for non-fiction books where each chapter can be considered separately.

I already sell short stories on Amazon Kindle for a buck each.  Books can have a lot of chapters in them, far more than the cost of just buying the book.  I could see it working for anthologies.  In fact, I really like that idea.  Mmm, perhaps I will try that some day when I get enough shorts for a decent antho.

I’ve heard of authors selling first drafts of their novels on Kindle for a reduced price, but I really don’t think that has much value.  Part of the value of a book is getting a finished, polished work of fiction.  Paying for a rough draft is kinda pointless.  However, I will be putting the various drafts of my future novels into their Writer’s Edition ebooks.  That way you are actually giving the nerdy unpolished bits away to those who would appreciate them the most, other writers.

Update – another good article that I have not yet finished reading.

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2 thoughts on “Buying by the Chapter”

  1. That’s a good idea, Nate. Divide the book into three acts maybe and charge accordingly. I might consider that for Null_Pointer on the Kindle. Whatever it takes to get readers into the book.

    But then I would have to charge more than what I currently do for the Kindle version. But that’s okay, I was going to charge more for NP than I did for Starstrikers anyway, to see what the market would bear.

  2. Not sure if selling fiction by the chapter would be a viable business model. What about selling fiction books by section? For example a 15 chapter book might be chopped down into 3, 5 chapter sections, and then could be peddled for a smaller amount in order to exploit the micro-transaction model that consumers seem to love?

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