Pricing- Marketing strategy or Sensible business plan?

First off I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to all the support you guys gave me on release day! For all the tweets and re-blogs and release day posts! I was so overwhelmed and it kept me smiling, well, to be honest, I’m still smiling now! :D Thank you so much.

And now, I’m going to broach a bit of a touchy subject, which is pricing.

I didn’t really want to talk about, as it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable :D But this is an honest blog, and I felt it is such a big part of writing as a career, I needed to post something on it.

I have to admit, how much I was going to charge for my books didn’t even enter my brain until it was staring me in the face on Kindle direct publishing, asking me to name a price for my work.

Blimey! What a task.

Having to put a price on my books which I’d spent months slogging over and producing to the highest standard I can achieve? It was difficult.

Obviously, I can’t price them too high because people just wouldn’t buy them otherwise, plus you have to consider with an eBook that there is no delivery cost or printing cost, so that does help reduce price.

But still, I want to make money. Not because I’m greedy :D But because I want to eventually live off of what I make. Some people charge very little for their eBooks, which is totally fine and their choice, and I completely understand it from a marketing strategy kind of perspective. The cheaper it is, the more likely people are to buy it, especially in today’s economy, where people have less money to start with to spend on luxuries. And if people buy one book for cheaper and like it, they are more likely to buy the others, especially if they aren’t very much.

But then there is the other side of the coin. The side where I want to earn my living from writing eventually. Instead of looking at pricing as another marketing strategy for people to buy my books, I needed to look at it from a sensible, financial point of view.

Writing is not only my life, it’s my business. And that needs to be taken seriously.

So I decided to price them as follows:

The Queen’s Jester (shortest, around 33,000 words)- £2.01

Stolen Bloodline (Bit longer, around 36,000 words)- £2.19

Heart of the Arena (My biggest- around 56,000 words)- £3.05

I went by pricing for a UK market, and I hope that it translated well to the US and other markets.

After choosing my prices, whilst waiting for the books to process, I was glancing around other eBooks that were about £1.99 or £1.50 and I was freaking out, thinking I’d charged too much.

Then, I actually sat back and thought about £3 as a price point.

It’s not that unusual to pay nearly £3 for a coffee from a coffee shop.

It’s not unusual to pay £3 or over for a small bunch of flowers.

It’s definitely not unusual to pay £3 for a box of chocolates.

It’s not even that unusual to pay £3 for a greetings card nowadays.

When I thought about it, I realised £3 is not a lot of money, especially considering the amount of energy and work that went into producing these books.

So yeah, some people might say I’ve charged too high, but from a business point of view, I think writers probably don’t charge enough. How much more entertainment is someone going to get from an eBook than from a box of chocolates? (Hm, possibly bad example, I get A LOT of enjoyment from a box of chocolates :D).

I understand the lower price points, but I stand by my choices for what I’ve charged. In the end, I often pay £3 or over for an eBook knowing I will get hours of enjoyment for it, and knowing that is a very small price to pay for that. I like to support writers, and I like to see them charging that bit extra, because I know how much work goes into producing a book.

So, there you have it, my opinion for the day! :D But then, S.K.Nicholls recently had a post where she was saying she sold tons more books at a lower price. So, it goes to show how pricing is such a hard thing to pin down and get right!

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As an aside, I’ve decided that every Thursday I shall re-blog a post. There are so many great posts out there by other writers, I would like to share my favourites! Just in case anyone was wondering why there was a re-blog post from me yesterday :)

I was also interviewed by the amazing Shehanne Moore, which has been posted today :D – http://shehannemoore.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/the-may-author-interview-3-in-one-with-mishka-jenkins/

What are your thoughts on pricing? What did you price your books at? What prices are you willing to pay for an eBook? Does price matter if you really want to read the book?

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Progress Report

Status of Fourth Manuscript: Planning and research.



May E-Book Review: Book read and review ready.