Update on Sales Figures

If you’re not familiar with self-publishing, here’s a quick primer on how the system works on Amazon.

The lowest possible price point is, of course, free. You get no royalties for any free giveaways, of course. You can price it for free, or if you’re on Amazon and publish with them exclusively (through what’s called “KDP Select”) you can have up to five “free days” per quarter.

Anything you price under $2.99, you get 35% of the purchase price back from Amazon as a royalty. The classic price point here is 99 cents – for some reason, people won’t buy books at the $1.99 price point. So for every book you sell at 99 cents, you get 35 cents back. (To put this another way, if you can sell a hundred thousand books a year at 99 cents, you can earn enough to have an average income in this country.)

Anything you price $2.99 or over, you get 70% of the purchase price, which is a much better deal. (You only have to sell 17,500 books a year to have an average income at $2.99 a book.) Even better, people will still buy your book at #3.99, which is even better.

Okay, this is what I have done so far:

My book (RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY) was published in March 2013. It started out at the $2.99 price point.
In April, I set my five free days for the first quarter. RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY hit #1 on the free list for literary fiction.
In May, I continued at the $2.99 price point.
In June, sales flatlined. I set a 99-cent promotion for June 29-July 4, and kept it going for a couple of days after that.
After I ended the 99-cent promotion, I re-priced the book at the $3.99 price point, mostly to see if it would sell.

So the prices have been kind of all over the map. Here’s what the actual figures (not including international or paperback sales) look like in a chart:

Price Point
Sales
Earnings


Free (includes free borrows)
17814
$174.64


$0.99
1155
$404.56


$2.99
189
$366.95


$3.99
22
$60.06


Total
19180
$1006.21

I think the lesson here, if there is a lesson, is that you can’t repeal the law of supply and demand. Other than that, you’re on your own.