Stop Pricing Your Book At .99 Cents

I remember the first time I fell in love with books. It was magical. On the earliest birthday I can remember my grandfather gave me a book as my gift  I was five I think. He gave my brother and I books for every birthday from three years old until we were sixteen.

I would read those books and be transported to a magical place. When I was a teenager, I started reading those Readers Digest short story books.  Do you remember those? They would take a snippet of a novel and have about five snippets in one volume.

I read about ten of those Readers Digest short stories and it solidified my love of books. I knew one day I would be a writer. That day came in 2011 when I decided to stop listening to my doubts and fears, stop listening to the negative voices of others, and put my book out there to the world.

I self-published Tales of the Everyday Working Man and Woman in August of 2011. It was a dream come true. When I was setting everything up one thing I studied was how to price my book.

I read what all the big self-published authors had to say about pricing. Most of the advice said there are millions of books out there and if you wanted your book to sell you should price it at .99 cents and go for bulk buys.

I did that. I priced the book at .99 cents and thought I was good. The book didn’t sell and it wasn’t just because of the price. When the book did start selling I had a chance to play around with pricing.

I priced the book between .99 cents and $9.97. These were my personal results. What I should tell you upfront is to test your own pricing and see what gets you the best results.  You should always test things out for yourself.

After a lot of testing the book is now priced at $4.97 and sells about 50 copies a month. To be honest, I’ve kind of neglected the book since the release of my first published book. 

Why you shouldn’t price your book at .99 cents 

The point of this post is that a book has tremendous value and I firmly believe you shouldn’t price your book at .99 cents unless it’s a highly targeted promotion and you’re trying to get specific results.

First, let me bring up something related to pricing. When I was at Brendon Burchard’s Expert’s Academy he brought up a seven-year study Walmart did on pricing. What they found is anything ending in the number 7  people bought like crazy.

When Walmart wants to blow something out they’ll stick it on an end cap and the price will end in seven. This study and other marketing strategies are covered in one of the best marketing books ever written: Blue Ocean Strategy.

If you look at anything on my website for sale it all ends in seven for that very reason. From my limited testing I’ve found the seven thing to be true. Again, test it out for yourself. Back to the discussion.

We assume our book should be priced based off of how long the book is: wrong, wrong, wrong! Your book should be priced based off the value it provides.

I’ll give you an example. My friend Abbie has a book that teaches those who want to be flight attendants how to get jobs. The book is about 31 pages. What we’re normally told is that since the book is short, it should be .99 cents.

That little book has helped 47 people land a job as flight attendants. Think about that, a $10 book that helps someone land a career job where they get to fly around the world? Would it make sense to price something with that much value at .99 cents? NO, NO, NO!

Whatever your book is  I’m sure it offers value that will help someone far beyond the price.  I would dare even say books should be priced even higher than they are now. You don’t want to be the Walmart of the book world, selling in bulk.

Instead you want to be mid-tier or high-end. That should be our goal: to provide high-end value to our audience. We have to eliminate old school thinking about book size. We’re in a new day and age from the old school book world.

Get feedback from your audience, see what they’re saying about the value of the book, and use that feedback to determine how to price. Price it higher and focus on building a solid foundation, not just getting quick sales.

What is your book priced at and how did you come up with that number?