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Price Drop on Everything!

Okay, not everything, but everything published by me, Stephan Michael Loy. You see, six, seven months ago  I began an experiment designed to increase book sales. The theory is that when you price books too low, prospective readers assign a low value to those books and skip purchasing them. But if you price books higher, the reader assigns a higher value to the work and is more likely to purchase. It sounds crazy, but it also sounds about right. People buy Apple computers because of their perceived value, and part of that percpetion has to do with the fact that they cost twice as much as a Windows PC. Part of the reason Mercedes is considered a desirable automobile — despite the fact that their cars are taxi cabs in Germany — is because Mercedes cars cost an arm and a leg. So a six-dollar book is perceived as a better product than a three-dollar book or even a free book. That was the theory, not mine, but one espoused by many a podcast self-publishing guru.

So, about six months ago I jacked up the prices of my books to make them more desirable. My observations to date indicate that the higher price value assertion is, at least in my case, a bunch of bullshit. Consequently, said experiment is concluded and I have lowered the prices of all my books and shorter works on Kindle and Smashwords. Right now and forevermore, you can purchase my novels for $2.99 from those two venues, my shorter works (novellas and long short stories) for $00.99. Not making much on sales like this, but I hope this makes the work at least a little more accessible to readers.

Here’s a link to go get my books at the Amazon Kindle Store, or, if you prefer, the Smashwords site. The difference? They’re all esentially the same document, but if you buy from the Kindle store you need to have either a Kindle reader or the free Kindle app installed on your reader. If you buy from Smashwords, you can choose the format in which the story will be delivered. If you don’t have an ebook reader, you can download the books in Word, plain text, RTF or PDF formats. If you have Kindle or their app, you can download the .mobi files. If you have any other reader, including iPads, iPhones, iPods, smart phones, Android, Nooks, Kobo, Palm, Sony or any ebook reader app, you can download and read the epub documents.

Whatever you do and on whatever format, download one or more of my books today. They won’t set you back more than the price of a few candy bars and you’ll get more out of them than nougat.

A few recommendations:

If you like political intrigue and a glimpse into the near-term future, try Conqueror’s Realm. This book explores what could happen when white people lose their majority status in America. Do racists take over, or does America at long last fulfill its promise of justice for all regardless of ethnic background?

Fantasy fan? Try Isis Wept, the story of conflict among the Egyptian gods and what happens to the humans stuck in the middle. If you prefer urban fantasy, go for Last Days and Times, the tale of a tortured twenty-something girl cursed to see the work of God regardless of its beauty or horror.

If you prefer space fantasy in the vein of Star Wars, try Shining Star, which follows a rebellion within a brutal, star-spanning theocracy.

There are also a number of shorter works in genres from police, to military to sic-fi, to satire. Take your pick, and I hope you enjoy. In fact, I’m sure you will.