The Great Pricing Question: How much should my book cost?

[Marie Silk]

Hello, I was hoping some of you would be willing to share how you came to the numbers to price your books, both ebook and print, and how it has helped or hurt your sales. I am just about to publish two books and the page count/word count seem to be considered low for novels (46K and 48K). Some of the websites I read implied that people pay more based on pages/word count and are disappointed at shorter books being priced "too high". My primary audiences are YA and New Adult so I think I should be okay with my book lengths, and I am not even sure if the correlation between page count and price is how it works. When I look at comparable books, the pricing seems to be all over the map. I was thinking 4.99 for my ebooks and 12.95 for print (going with Amazon, KDP, Smashwords, and D2D). Are these reasonable starting points? Is it okay to change the prices later or does it look bad? Any feedback is appreciated!

[Neven]

Hi Marie,

Below is a link to the 2015 Smashwords Survey, which has some great ideas and tips on pricing that you may find interesting.

http://blog.smashwords.com/2015/12/Sm...

Hope it helps!

[Marie Silk]

Thank you for the link! It is extremely helpful :) The pre-order stats are intriguing as well!

[Neven]

Marie wrote: "Thank you for the link! It is extremely helpful :) The pre-order stats are intriguing as well!"

My pleasure! Yes, pre-orders are a very powerful tool. I am looking forward to using it for my second book. Be sure to read the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide too!

[Anthony Deeney]

The great thing is that you can change your price as you decide. Day to day, week, month price variations and sales can be tracked.

[Owen]

As Anthony says, you can change the price to see what works best. The Smashwords survey is valuable, but it broad-brush. Readers tend to view new authors in a different light than authors with several books.

For what it's worth, our readers (who have expressed an opinion) are reluctant to spend more than $3.99 on an eBook. The "sweet spot" for them seems to be $2.99, and they do expect a $3.99 book to be a longer work. We priced our shorter novel (59K words) at $2.99 and our longer novels (165k to 175K words) at $3.99. We write sci-fi.

[P.J.]

I would agree with Owen. E-books that sell, according to a few of my other author friends is anything £2.99 and under and so i have done that with mine, though it is 164,000 words! As for print, one of mine is £8.95, so seeing how that fairs. For myself, I do tend to look for books below £10 - hope this helps :)

[Noah]

Mine is at 2.99 at the moment and I think I'll just keep it right there. It's funny how much of a difference 99 cents makes or obviously, when you set your book to free for a limited time.

One thing that fascinates me is when you see how stingy people are with their money. I'm talking (typing) about friends and family that actually support you and/or believe in your writing abilities. I recently witnessed a friend of mine blow twenty dollars easy on some crappy movie theater food...yet is the same person who would never buy a physical copy of my book even though they've stated they have wanted to on several occasions.

[E.A.]

Marie wrote: "Hello, I was hoping some of you would be willing to share how you came to the numbers to price your books, both ebook and print, and how it has helped or hurt your sales. I am just about to publish..."
For the paperback versions of my novels, I priced them at $9.50 USD which gives me a royalty of about $2.20 per book which I thought was a reasonable amount. For the Kindle versions, I wanted to keep my royalty about the same, which meant a sale price of $3.50 USD.

Since I'm Canadian and most of my sales are in Canada, the paperback sells for about $12.55 CDN and the Kindle version for about $4.66 CDN. Canadian prices fluctuate based on the exchange rate.

I never put the paperback version on sale but I'll periodically put the Kindle version on sale for $1.99 USD.

[Jennifer]

I'm finding this very helpful. Being as I am at this stage in my own writing right now. My research says $2.99 for an eBook is the sweet spot. But my question is for a paperback or even a hardcover. How do you keep the cost low enough for potential buyers without losing profit through printing costs.

[Noah]

If you self-publish through Createspace/Amazon, you're not going to get much back in terms of profit. Even if your book is at 12.99, you only receive two dollars and change per copy sold.

What I do is buy a bulk amount and then sell them personally to anyone who would like one. That's the only way you won't lose profit on your hard work.

[[deleted user]]

Jennifer wrote: "I'm finding this very helpful. Being as I am at this stage in my own writing right now. My research says $2.99 for an eBook is the sweet spot. But my question is for a paperback or even a hardcover..."

You might check out this thread if you're marketing paperbacks:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Print-to-order paperbacks are going to be relatively expensive anyway, so I wouldn't skimp on the format to make it a few pages thinner.

[April]

Marie wrote: "Hello, I was hoping some of you would be willing to share how you came to the numbers to price your books, both ebook and print, and how it has helped or hurt your sales. I am just about to publish..."

Hi, Marie

I'll tell you what I recommend, although I know many would disagree with me for a variety of reasons. I'm just going to address e-books here. Paperbacks are a completely different story.

Yes, those word counts are considered low for novels. I wouldn't call them full-length novels, but rather short novels. They're too long for novellas, so they're sort of in between. Many readers do look at page count and make purchasing decisions based on that... especially when evaluating length of the book versus price. I, personally, don't have a problem with buying/reading shorter books, but there are some readers who do.

Pricing is an extremely important aspect of your marketing mix. For new authors - or authors who have not established a strong, loyal fan base - I recommend that you start out in Amazon KDP Select and price your books at the lowest price point, which for KDP Select is $2.99. Once you have a strong following and brisk book sales, you can raise your price to $3.99, and eventually to $4.99. Few readers will spend $4.99 for an unknown (to them) author. The $2.99 price point is low enough that readers will try a new author if the sample looks good. If you want to grow your readership and get your book into as many hands as possible, you will want to go with KDP Select (i.e., Kindle Unlimited) and an e-book price of $2.99. Right now, your goal is to sell as many books as possible to grow your exposure and raise your Amazon rating. To do that, you need to keep your prices low. You'll make more money selling many books at a lower price than selling fewer books at a higher price.

I know indie authors who sell a lot of books per month, and they still price at $2.99. If they have a strong selling series, they might give the first book away for free (permafree) or price it at .99 or at $2.99, and then price the rest of the series at $3.99 (but only if the series is selling well). E-book readers are very price sensitive, so you want to keep your prices low to be competitive and give yourself an advantage over higher-priced books. Plus, traditionally published e-books are usually priced considerably higher ($4.99 - $9.99), so keeping a low e-book price gives you a competitive advantage over the traditionals.

As I said, there are plenty of folks who will disagree with my recommendations, and that's fine. I'm sure they will give you alternative strategies to consider. And you should consider all strategies before you decide what's right for you.

Regarding paperbacks.... you probably won't sell many of them, so your pricing strategy is less important there - again, just keep your price as low as you can. It's your e-book pricing strategy that's most important to your success.

Best of luck to you!!

April

[Jennifer]

Noah wrote: "What I do is buy a bulk amount and then sell them personally to anyone who would like one. That's the only way you won't lose profit on your hard work."

That seams to be the consensus. I was hoping someone would have a magic answer that would blow my mind lol. I guess it's back to saving to invest in myself again lol. Thanks

[Jennifer]

Ken wrote: "Print-to-order paperbacks are going to be relatively expensive anyway, so I wouldn't skimp on the format to make it a few pages thinner."

I guess it always goes back to - if your going to do something, do it right. Thanks for the link its helpful.

[Marie Silk]

Wow, these replies have been so helpful! This indie publishing thing seems to be taking years off my life over these silly decisions, haha. Thank you so much to everyone who has answered! I will rethink my ebook price. I am also having trouble with the "new adult" category because it seems to have the reputation of steamy stuff. When I look it up on Amazon, most of the covers show half-naked people. My book is pretty "innocent" with only implied scandal so it just doesn't seem to match the books in this category, although my characters (ages 17-22) are older than typical YA books. It is historical fiction early 1900s so the characters still deal with things like curfews, chaperons, overbearing parents. Sigh. Decisions, decisions.

[A.]

I love the helpful responses. April, your response was great and as I press forward in my own publishing march, I am going to keep what you said tucked in the back of my head. I heard 2.99 before and all the comments here seem to echo it and give some reasoning behind why it's the sweet spot. The issue of a paper copy is also interesting. I've been debating doing printing of maybe 100 books for my book release party so people have an actual book in their hands that I can sign. But they are much more expensive in every way. As Marie says, decisions, decisions.

[G.G.]

April wrote: "Pricing is an extremely important aspect of your marketing mix. For new authors - or authors who have not established a strong, loyal fan base - I recommend that you start out in Amazon KDP Select and price your books at the lowest price point, which for KDP Select is $2.99. Once you have a strong following and brisk book sales, you can raise your price to $3.99, and eventually to $4.99. Few readers will spend $4.99 for an unknown (to them) author. The $2.99 price point is low enough that readers will try a new author if the sample looks good. If you want to grow your readership and get your book into as many hands as possible, you will want to go with KDP Select (i.e., Kindle Unlimited) and an e-book price of $2.99. Right now, your goal is to sell as many books as possible to grow your exposure and raise your Amazon rating. To do that, you need to keep your prices low. You'll make more money selling many books at a lower price than selling fewer books at a higher price...."

This is not a bad strategy but if the price keeps going up with each books, readers might give up on you, especially if they are short novels or cliffhangers. Readers are not crazy, and no matter how they love your work, if they feel you're abusing them, they'll flock elsewhere.

[J.M.]

What about Children's Picture books? Where a large consideration is not the word count but the number, size and quality of the artwork.

[[deleted user]]

Having had experience from my first novel, I priced my second one at $4.99, and it sold well on Amazon (and nowhere else) until the 90-day high-profile "new-book" honeymoon ended, and then it tailed off. I lowered the price after that to $3.99, but saw no resurgence in sales. I now price both my novels at $3.99, and my two short-story collections at $2.99. I get an occasional sale now and then, and I'm satisfied with that until I get a new book out.

[Shoshanah]

I have some experience with printing books with pictures, and I have found that, if you make your pictures color, CreateSpace is incredibly expensive! My book Avoiding Sex with Frenchmen is $24, and that is definitely too much! My black and white book, coloring inside the dreams, is $5.38, and people buy that. I get comments about how cheap it is! My next book (a coloring book) is going to be $7.99, and I'll see if I sell as many.

My main lesson is: no color pictures because it makes the book too expensive! And

$5.38 was affordable for people, though I only made about $1 per book- which is why I am charging more for the next one.

[Julie]

This is really helpful. I'm wrestling with setting the price of my new novel ( 380pp ). Using Createspace means, if I want more than a few pence per copy I have to rice it at £8.99, ( about $11.99) which will put people off buying it. I can get a paperback printed and delivered for £5.60, so that will allow me to sell at £6.99 or £7.99. But Amazon is still a market leader, so I want my books on there. Does anyone know how their price comparison works? If I market the book at £7.99, do they have to match that rice and, if they do, does the reduction come out of author's royalties?

[T.L.]

Marie; re YA, it means just that.
Yeah, the covers may be all sexy but read the books and they had better be very innocent inside, otherwise they'll fall under the 'indecent' Amazon category and find themselves removed from site pronto.

I've read a few YA books and they've been harmless.
No panic there.
I really enjoyed Chanda Hahn's Fairytale series if you want a comparison? Lots of fae creatures, and a love interest but I don't think they even really kiss.

xx

[[deleted user]]

Julie wrote: "This is really helpful. I'm wrestling with setting the price of my new novel ( 380pp ). Using Createspace means, if I want more than a few pence per copy I have to rice it at £8.99, ( about $11.99)..."

Amazon may discount hardcovers and paperbacks slightly, but I'm pretty sure they don't price match. My books at Lulu.com are far lower than on Amazon or any other site, but no one even attempts to match those prices.