What Price is The Right Price For Your Book?
“It is all about writing.” That is what most writers love to say when they have finally finished all the hard work that they had to do on their book. They are excited that they have edited and re-written and cut out and put back in just to make this a great book- and they believe in it, they might find more to fix, but they love the art of writing.
They send it off to the publishers, and then they hope for the best. They can also choose to continue on a journey of their own and self-publish. This is where price becomes a matter of the readers view.
The hard part of the writing process is next- it’s all about money and how much people are willing to spend. If you are a self-published author, you must decide on the price of your book, and also what format your book will be sold in. Its price and how much your readers will want to spend for it are factors.
Many writers hear of e-books being priced at $0.99, and they believe that this price point increases sales because a reader is more likely to purchase a book for $0.99 than one priced more expensively at $2.99 or more. It could be a simple answer to sell your book for a lower price and increase your potential sales, or you could market your book more. For my own self-published book, In Search of The Lost Ones
A writer should think about royalties. For instance, Kindle Direct Publishing offers two levels of royalties: one is 35% and one is 70% of the list price. If the price is $0.99 and the royalty level is 35%, then each book sold returns the author $0.35. Sell that same book for $2.99, and choose the 70% royalty level, then each book would return $2.09 in cash to the author, and a lot sooner as well.
This means that a new author will needs sell 6 more books to earn the same royalty as they would if they were to sell one e-book. The same holds true for paperback books; the lower the price, the more likely the sale, but the harder it is to make the same amount of money. It’s pretty hard to listen to the sweet sounds of music when marketing becomes the focus.
What is the best price for your book? It depends on you: How much marketing and writing you are willing to do to get the sales you want?
PS- Please visit one special person — Patricia (@epublishabook) — whom I follow on twitter to get an idea where this topic came from.
2 Comments
J.L. Murphey
For me, it honestly depends in the word counts and the subject matter. If s lot has been written on a certain subject, you might do well to under cut the competition on nonfiction. My nonfictions have sold very well, while my fiction books have a more modest sales.
It depends on what the market will bear.
As to word count…if I write 110K word novel I'm not going to sell it for 99 cents. It will more like 3.99 for e-versions.But the price become unreasonable at 16.99 for a paperback in self publishing.
Rebecca A Emrich
J.L. Murphy- here here. It's also about how people see it. Price matters in everything.