$3.99.

If you’ve been following this blog, you know I’ve been experimenting with the price of the Please ebook to find the ideal price to attract new readers, raising and lowering it like a seismograph. OK, a seismograph that moves between $2.99 and $4.99.

A lot of indie writers think $2.99 is the perfect price for ebooks, with the occasional dip into 99 cents to generate publicity and drive sales. This isn’t the case for Please. Sales were slow but steady when I initially set the price at $3.99. When I dropped the price to $2.99, sales dropped as well. “Oh ho!” I thought. “My readers don’t trust lower prices and want to pay top dollar for quality writing. I am the scotch of literature!” So I raised the price to $4.99. And sales dropped again. Maybe my readers are just hung over.

So, for whatever reason, the ideal price for Please seems to be $3.99. And that’s where I’ll leave it. I’m done experimenting with price for that book. Now I’m just going to wait for riches and fame.

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Still waiting….

I received my box of author’s copies from HarperCollins today, so the paperbacks of The Warhol Gang should be hitting the stores any day now. Also, it’s always fun to open a box of your own books!

I offer up a few quotes for a Globe piece about how Harlequin is revolutionizing the e-book market. I wish I could quit you, Harlequin.

Please is one of the featured books over at the new site The Book Review for Fiction – ‘ebooks for serious readers.’

I’ve always had a soft spot for Tintin comics. Yes, yes, I know some people have problems with their politics, but they’re one of the first things I remember reading, and they kickstarted my imagination as a kid. The moon! He goes to the moon! I sometimes wish there were more of them, so this series of mock Tintin covers is bittersweet.

A detail of the Gaudi church in Barcelona, run through the Plastic Bullet app. I like the way this one turned out.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with iPhone filters lately, particularly the ones that produce random results. I’m often delighted with the aftermath, as they produce images I never would have dreamed up myself. Take the pic above, for instance. It’s Frank Gehry’s Peix, run through the Tiltshift and Plastic Bullet apps. The Apocalypse Filter, if you will.

Also, I miss Barcelona.

Depressing combination of stories in my feeds lately. SETI has apparently been put on hold, while an article in Business Week argues the innovators and geniuses of our generation are doing nothing but selling widgets. Sigh….

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m conducting a little experiment in pricing to figure out the best price for Please. Not the best price to maximize profits, but the best price to attract new readers. I’ve had Please priced at $2.99 for April, and I’ll be raising it to $4.99 for the month of May. After that, I’ll set the permanent price and leave it there. Unless this crazy ebook trend changes everything again, of course….

So your time to buy the author’s cut of Please with bonus material at $2.99 may be running out. How can you possibly sleep at night?

The 21st century is a bubble. China is building entire cities no one lives in to keep up the GDP. The story of the toy-store owner with no customers is just plain sad.

Also, is this why China’s equivalent of Google Maps are hand-drawn? To hide the rust and decay?