Yesterday, I can across a fascinating post on D V Bishop’s Substack discussing the pros, cons and basic point of the 99p ebook. Bishop is the author of the seminal conspiracy thriller Who Killed Kennedy (basically about the involvement of a certain time lord in the assassination of JFK – note the lack of question mark in the title) but also, more recently and almost certainly more successfully, of the Cesare Aldo historical thrillers, all of which I’ve reviewed on the blog.

The article fascinated me, because I’ve become a bit of a magpie when it comes to 99p treats and my kindle is chockful of them, so I thought I’d take a look at my purchases over the past three months and see what I’ve picked up and, more importantly, why I picked them up.

So, over the past three months, I’ve bought forty ebooks from Amazon. One cost £2.99 – a book I wanted to read as I enjoyed the first in the series, and two cost £1.99 – one from a Crime and Nourishment author that I didn’t have time to read before the event and one collection of 8 medieval mysteries that, as might be a bit of a theme here, I forgot that I’d bought. But the other 37 were only 99p. So let’s try and group them into categories as to why I bought them…

Books For Events

I’ve had a couple of events coming up and I do like to try and take a punt on authors who are at those events so that I don’t go in completely blind to their work. Of course I can never tick off everyone, but nine of the books were bought specifically for that reason. Basically, I ran through the list of the authors who were speaking and saw who was offering a 99p gamble. I should say, that there is one that I would have paid more for – if I hadn’t seen The Betrayal Of Thomas True by A J West for a bargain, I probably would have bought it anyway. And now I’ve read it, I strongly recommend you do too.

Books I Actively Want To Read

Books that while I wasn’t exactly looking for them, when the offer appeared in my inbox or (usually) via Facebook, I wasn’t going to say no. So books from favourtie authors – two Stuart MacBride titles, a recommended Seishi Yokomizo title, the next in Elly Griffiths’ time travel series, a Lincoln Rhyme novella from Jeffrey Deaver, the first serial killer book from Sam Holland, Terry Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant and David Fennell’s All Killers Abroad that Mike Craven recommended and that’s good enough for me. Oh, and Suzy Aspley’s second book, The Bone Mother, that I bought before she was nice enough to send me a real copy. So that’s another nine books…

Books That I Might Read Someday…

Basically, books that are later in a series that I have started or might start. So basically saving them up for a rainy day. An investment of 99p, let’s say. So a late Slough House book by Mick Herron, a couple of titles from Michael Wood and a late Tim Sullivan DI Cross title. Another four ticked off.

Books That Are A Bargain I Can’t Ignore

I suppose these are gambles of a sort, but six from Judith Cutler, nine from Rhys Bowen, eight from Priscilla Masters and five from Jim Kelly, each sold as a single collection, makes 28 books for a total price of £3.96. And the Jim Kelly titles – the only series I’ve touched on to date – is worth that price by themselves. But at an average price of 14p a book… what else only costs 14p these days?

And That Leaves…

Eleven books bought on a whim. That’s cheap and sounds interesting, let’s give it a go. Or, perhaps, leave it until a rainy day. It doesn’t always work. Two books on the list (which I won’t name) were, quite frankly, terrible and not desperately entertainingly so. And given I bought three in one of those series, that’s four quid I’ll not see again. On the other hand, I’m Not The Only Murderer In My Retirement Home by Fergus Craig is a wonderful book, and if it wasn’t for a 99p price tag, I don’t think I’d have tried it, not having seen a review of it. And you’ve got no excuse, it was the Puzzly last month!

And the rest – well, there are some Christmas shenanigans in two of the books – which is why I bought them – but the rest, I think I was just worn down by how many times I’d seen them advertised by me. Yes, I’m weak.

But Why?

But is this a successful scheme for publishers? Yes, I suppose, for the Fergus Craig book, but where is the value in a 99p copy of Mick Herron’s Clown Town? It’s not the next book after the most recent series of Slow Horses, so it doesn’t catch that market. I bought it because eventually, I will read the series from the start, so it’s going to sit on my Kindle for years, probably. So no word of mouth promotion… Is it just me who wouldn’t dive in to the middle of a series? Now if the first book was 99p, that would make sense to me…

And where is the logic for another, older, purchase, namely the complete Falconer mysteries by Ian Morson. 99p for nine books – and then once you’ve read and enjoyed them… what? Morson did write another series but it’s very much out of print. There’s no promotion here because there’s nothing else to promote? So where is the logic in that?

Conclusions

Well, not a lot to be honest. A lot of the books I’ve bought are occupying space in ym virtual TBR pile. There are some books that I’m very glad I only spent 99p on, and others that I feel as if I’ve basically stolen something from the author as I would have read the book anyway. At the end of the day, while they’re still there, I’ll still be succumbing to temptation. But I do hope it means that the authors don’t lose out…