Pricing yourself out of the free market

Those who follow me on Twitter may have noticed a few tweets in reference to what I label @kindlesteals. These are free books that I find with regular prices of $4.99 or more.

When you engage in as much “free reading” as I do (i.e., reading mostly only what you can “purchase” for free on your Kindle), your reading consists largely of independent pubishers. There’s a boon of those in today’s ebook world, of varying talent, and it is definitely interesting to see the vast variety of literature now reaching the market that didn’t in the past. But even some of the publishing houses are picking up on the valuable promotional tool that a free e-book can be. This can result in limited time free offers for e-books that are generally much higher in price.

One such freebie I recently ran across was “Critical Care” by Candace Calvert and released by Tyndale Publishing. In this case, I feel it is very unfortunate that Calvert is represented by a publishing house rather than being an independent publisher.

“Critical Care” is a Christian medical romance and the first in Calvert’s Mercy Hospital series. Calvert also has a second three-book Grace Medical series in the same theme.

This book was a really enjoyable read. It had the twists and turns of a medical soap, with a Christian undercurrent and very mild romance. It was really well-written and I’d like to read more.

However, I am unlikely to continue reading in this series due to the publisher’s pricing. With prices around $10 for each e-book, there are so many more titles (even those by bestselling authors including the “giants” like Stephen King or Dean Koontz or J.K. Rowling) that are much lighter on the pocketbook.

I was hoping to get a review posted for this title while it was still free, but in checking today, I notice the book is already full-price. There may be a similar promotion in the future, so I’d suggest that anyone who might be interested in reading (but not interested in risking around $10 on an e-book) might place this on an Amazon wishlist to be alerted to price changes. This is a tactic I often employ with books that I am interested in but don’t wish to pay full price for.