The Price is Right?
Among the list of important decisions that every indie author has to make is the economic decision of price. At what price will we sell our wares? What is the right price?
This is a more complex question than it might appear at first blush. After all it is one of the most important drivers of sales. Price your book too high or too low and sales will simply not happen for you. So yes, time and care must be taken when deciding upon a price.
But how do you decide? Certainly one of the methods would be to search out other books in your genre and see what they're selling for. Examine the bestseller list (it is where you wish to be right?) and copy their pricing. The only problem here being that when you start out you're not a bestselling author and readers may not be willing to pay the bestseller premium for your book.
Let's look at some numbers here for a moment. As of right now on Amazon.com these are the top ten bestsellers in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category:
1. The Atlantis Gene - $3.99
2. The Butterfly Garden - $4.99
3. Evelyn, After - $4.99
4. The Girl on the Train - $9.99
5. My Sister's Grave - $4.99
6. When I'm Gone - $1.99
7. The Body Reader - $4.99
8. Order To Kill - $14.99
9. And Then She Was GONE - $0.99
10. Before You Leap - $4.99
The price ranges from $0.99 to $14.99 with an average price of $5.69 leading me to question whether or not there is a premium on bestsellers?
If we work with the average price here and assume that on average it takes a reader 2 minutes to read a page and the average book length is 350 pages, then it follows that it will take about 12 hours to finish a book. So for the investment of $5.69 the reader gets 12 hours of entertainment (we hope!) at a cost of roughly $0.47 per hour!
Going to the movies and buying a drink and popcorn will run you at least $20 for 2 hours of entertainment; making that night out worth $10 an hour to you. The theatre if we assume a ticket price of $60 (it could be more or less depending) and an evening length of 3 hours will cost you $20 per hour of entertainment.
By far; a bestselling novel is a runaway bargain or grossly undervalued. I'm thinking it may be the latter.
Amazon has done wonders for authors in terms of providing a platform and a market for our work. But...the digital revolution also brought about a decline in the price of novels. The fantastic deals available to the consumer on Amazon have the effect of readers scoffing at a book priced at $9.99, regarding it as overpriced!
Look at the list again; only 2 books sell for more than five dollars. The runaway success from Paula Hawkins and another bestseller from Vince Flynn. As an indie author, can we really expect to compete with these two? If we price our book higher than $4.99 are we courting failure? Is it really overpriced to ask the reader to spend more than $0.42 per hour?
Personally my books are priced at $3.99 and $2.99 on Amazon. Are they overpriced? I don't think so. Are they undervalued? As with a lot of books I think the answer is yes. But this is the price of business in this market. Consumers have been conditioned to believe that $1.99-$4.99 is the price point of a book and if it's less than that it's cheap and not worth their time. If it's more than that...well you'd better be well known.
To my fellow indie authors, I invite you to share the logic behind your own pricing in the comments section.
Looking forward to an engaging discussion!!
This is a more complex question than it might appear at first blush. After all it is one of the most important drivers of sales. Price your book too high or too low and sales will simply not happen for you. So yes, time and care must be taken when deciding upon a price.
But how do you decide? Certainly one of the methods would be to search out other books in your genre and see what they're selling for. Examine the bestseller list (it is where you wish to be right?) and copy their pricing. The only problem here being that when you start out you're not a bestselling author and readers may not be willing to pay the bestseller premium for your book.
Let's look at some numbers here for a moment. As of right now on Amazon.com these are the top ten bestsellers in the Mystery, Thriller & Suspense category:
1. The Atlantis Gene - $3.99
2. The Butterfly Garden - $4.99
3. Evelyn, After - $4.99
4. The Girl on the Train - $9.99
5. My Sister's Grave - $4.99
6. When I'm Gone - $1.99
7. The Body Reader - $4.99
8. Order To Kill - $14.99
9. And Then She Was GONE - $0.99
10. Before You Leap - $4.99
The price ranges from $0.99 to $14.99 with an average price of $5.69 leading me to question whether or not there is a premium on bestsellers?
If we work with the average price here and assume that on average it takes a reader 2 minutes to read a page and the average book length is 350 pages, then it follows that it will take about 12 hours to finish a book. So for the investment of $5.69 the reader gets 12 hours of entertainment (we hope!) at a cost of roughly $0.47 per hour!
Going to the movies and buying a drink and popcorn will run you at least $20 for 2 hours of entertainment; making that night out worth $10 an hour to you. The theatre if we assume a ticket price of $60 (it could be more or less depending) and an evening length of 3 hours will cost you $20 per hour of entertainment.
By far; a bestselling novel is a runaway bargain or grossly undervalued. I'm thinking it may be the latter.
Amazon has done wonders for authors in terms of providing a platform and a market for our work. But...the digital revolution also brought about a decline in the price of novels. The fantastic deals available to the consumer on Amazon have the effect of readers scoffing at a book priced at $9.99, regarding it as overpriced!
Look at the list again; only 2 books sell for more than five dollars. The runaway success from Paula Hawkins and another bestseller from Vince Flynn. As an indie author, can we really expect to compete with these two? If we price our book higher than $4.99 are we courting failure? Is it really overpriced to ask the reader to spend more than $0.42 per hour?
Personally my books are priced at $3.99 and $2.99 on Amazon. Are they overpriced? I don't think so. Are they undervalued? As with a lot of books I think the answer is yes. But this is the price of business in this market. Consumers have been conditioned to believe that $1.99-$4.99 is the price point of a book and if it's less than that it's cheap and not worth their time. If it's more than that...well you'd better be well known.
To my fellow indie authors, I invite you to share the logic behind your own pricing in the comments section.
Looking forward to an engaging discussion!!
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Alexa
(new)
Nov 17, 2016 07:51AM
When I decided pricing my book at $3.99, I remember Google was my BFF. I read a few articles that were breaking down the pricing of ebooks, and one in particular was detailing how $1.99 pricing falls between the cracks, and $2.99 and $3.99 are usually the best. I decided on the latter due to the length of my book. I usually drop it down to $0.99 if I have a promo nowadays, but otherwise stick with $3.99 :) So far, hasn't steered me wrong!
reply
|
flag
