World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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Pricing: cents and pennies or round numbers?
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Price can be part of your advertising. For example, I priced my finance book, http://amzn.to/2p3eq48 at 7.77 in international markets and it seemed to create an uptick in sales. I recommend pricing at 2.99 rather than 3 because it creates a roadblock in the reader's mind when it doesn't look like other books they have purchased. My 0.02
I agree with Logan, the pricing is entrenched in a general marketplace. If you are looking at higher end, then rounded numbers have appeal, but Amazon is about pricing and that is the norm.
Coins as currency made sense before sophisticated printing technology made possible the production paper money at a low cost. It also made sense when many items cost less than the lowest denomination bill distributed by various nations.Psychologically, 99 cents may appear to be a better deal than $1, However, the elimination of such tactics would only impact relatively few potential consumers. Most avid readers prefer quality material and would rather pay more for well-written, professional books than settle for poorly written, amateurish works priced lower.
Old habits are hard to break, but once broken, they become the new habits of another generation.
I went with how I saw other book pricing on Amazon. It looked like the paperback prices ended in .95 while the ebook prices ended in .99.
Everyone says price at 1 cent below the dollar, e.g. $2.99, not $3. However, while I put that there for Amazon, NONE ofmy ebooks end u-p at that price - Amazon fiddles sightly up and down, the currency conversions don't come out like that for other Amazons, and then in some countries there is tax added on. I give up trying to make anything of this.
If you distribute through SW or D2D, one issue I had with Apple was that unconventional pricing never made it to their site. I tried at one time to price a series at 1.49/book and it showed up on Apple at 1.99. I tried pricing at a flat dollar and it showed up on Apple at 1.99. When I placed my two largest works at $5 even, they showed up at $5.99.
J.J. wrote: "If you distribute through SW or D2D, one issue I had with Apple was that unconventional pricing never made it to their site. I tried at one time to price a series at 1.49/book and it showed up on A..."Yeah, I've given up trying to work out Apples's pricing.
An interesting thread. As a consumer, I like it when price plus tax, plus shipping equals an even number, but as a seller you can't make that happen. I don't think ending in .99 matters anymore as a sales tactic. It's initial use did have a purpose but that ended a long time ago. I think we just look at it and think $1, $2, $3 and we have a price in mind of how much it is worth to us. Often I see e-books that cost almost as much and even sometimes more than the printed version, which I don't understand. Again, as a consumer, my biggest issue with e-books (I buy through Amazon), is that there is no discount for buying a complete series all at once. I was having a discussion in another thread and it appears to be the publishers or vendors, and not the authors. If you have a 3, 5, or even 8 book series of which I have read the first one and liked it enough that I want the whole series, since I can't get a discount for buying the complete series, I buy them one at a time. If there were a discount, I could justify blowing my budget and getting all of them at one time.
Do you all price with .99 remainder or go for the round and nice figures?
I nominally go for .99 because Amazon seems to like it - I would prefer the round number, but it doesn't really matter because Amazon seems to vary it a bit anyway. Then with the "foreign" currency the Amazon converter comes up with all sorts of numbers. These tend to be irrelevant anyway because I don't sell enough in Brazil, say, to make the payment threshold, so those sales are merely a donation to Amazon.
They psychology/basis for 99 cents, if accurate, is that 1) it forces the cashier to open a register to make change and therefore difficult to steal the money; 2) we read left to right so we concentrate on the first number (1 for 1.99) rather than thinking we are spending 2 dollars we subconsciously think we are spending 1 dollar (NOT ME); and 3) they did some experiments about 15 years ago and people are move likely to buy something ending in a 9 rather than a 4. They did a whole 54 dollars vs. 59 dollar experiment, allegedly.I am more aware than they give me credit for as 54 is less than 59, but I admit as a number 9 appeals to me more than 4, but in general odd numbers are more attractive than even - and I have no idea why.
Is it a grave mistake to charge round 3 bucks for a book instead of noble 2.99?
Nik wrote: "Is it a grave mistake to charge round 3 bucks for a book instead of noble 2.99?"Try it and see? My experience is that Amazon is just as likely as not to make it $3.04 just to be different.
Do you think a 0.99 book will sell much better than 1$ or 2.99 euro than 3?