Okay folks, we have a semisolid live date for Solo Media. Publishing gets reinvented February 1, 2005.
We’ve still got some stuff to iron out in the next two months, though. Most importantly, distribution and pricing.
We’re thinking 50� for each issue. Seems like a nice, round number and small enough that people won’t hedge too much about paying it. Fictionwise makes handling micropayments easy, and we fit right in with what they’re doing over there.
But what about subscriptions? We’re doing serials here, and that means once you’re into the story, you’re not likely to skip an issue deliberately. “No, I don’t need issue 11. I’ll just pick up 12 when it comes out.” So it would be a good idea to allow for package subscriptions as well. What’s a reasonable price for that? I’d like to offer a small discount as an incentive to subscribe, maybe 12 monthly issues for the price of 11? So a year’s subscription would cost $5.50 rather than the $6.00 you’d pay buying individually.
But then how does that factor in with compilations? We’re also planning on repackaging each story arc as a stand-alone ebook, similar to how comics are often republished as trade paperbacks. Again, for this I was thinking about deducting the price of a single issue. If it was a seven-issue arc, we’d charge $3.00 for the ebook rather than buying the back issues individually for a total of $3.50. Would people be less likely to subscribe if they thought “I’ll just catche the compilation when it comes out.”
Ooh! Here’s a thought. Not only is there a one issue discount for subscribing, but you also get the compilations of those issues for free. I’d have to see if the folks at FictionWise could do this, and it would be tricky when story arcs span annual boundaries (do you get the free compilation if only one issue fell within your subscription window?), but that sounds like a neat idea.
So, any thoughts? We want to make sure we get this right.
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