Every now and then someone asks me what I think about such-and-such price for an ebook. I’ve talked a lot about how I like free or 99 cents for a Book 1 in a series, thus to let people try the first adventure at low (or no) risk and perhaps find themselves interested enough to purchase more. This has worked well for me with my Emperor’s Edge series.
But what if you’ve just published your first novel and don’t have any others out? Or what if you’re not doing a series, and all of your ebooks are unrelated? I had to consider this with my stand-alone fantasy adventure, Encrypted.
Long-time author Dean Wesley Smith suggests $6.99 to $7.99 for full-length novels, saying that this price range is a bargain when compared to most ebooks put out by traditional publishers. I haven’t come across too many self-published authors pricing their ebooks that highly yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try it. I’m certainly all for authors making a living wage from their work (though it’s important to be realistic and not expect to make a living wage from one book — as we’ve discussed before, most successful indies have multiple books and often multiple series out).
I started out selling Encrypted for $2.99 (to earn the 70% royalty) and later raised it to $3.95 when I increased the prices of my Emperor’s Edge novels to $4.95. Could I make more if I raised the price further? Perhaps, perhaps not.
One thing to remember is that your earnings aren’t a result of price alone. Units sold must be considered. X * Y = Z, right? Raise either X (price) or Y (units sold), and your earnings go up. But raising X might cause Y to drop to such a point that Z is lower.
A common mistake authors make when choosing price
A lot of authors get hung up on their own perceptions of the value of the novel. I put a year’s work into this, and I know it’s an awesome read, so it has to be worth at least $X.XX per book. But what if it turned out that you could make more money each month by selling the ebook at 99 cents instead of the $6.99 or whatever you thought it was worth?
There’s no guarantee that this would be the case (and we’ve seen evidence that Amazon is making it harder for the 99-cent titles to rank well on the popularity lists), but I believe, if increasing income is your main motivation, it’s best to experiment and not let your own beliefs dictate price. Why adamantly say that you sell all novels for $X.XX when it may turn out that X novel in one genre earns more when it’s selling for $4.95 whereas Y novel in a different genre pulls in a greater income at $2.99? Or even $9.99?
As authors and creators, it’s hard for us to be dispassionate about our work, but it’s best not to be married to any one particular number. Try one price, see how well the novel sells, then try other prices, higher and lower to find the sweet spot. (Keep in mind that if sales are dismal, price is only one factor — get an outside opinion on the cover art, blurb, and sample pages. Also having some reviews on the book’s sales page is crucial.)
In the end, of course, it’s up to you and what’s important to you as a writer. I honestly haven’t experimented with > $5 price tags because I’m making a nice income right where I’m at. I like that the reader gets a deal and that I make enough to pay the bills and cover my chocolate and latte addictions.
What do you guys think? Have you found a sweet spot for your stand alone novels? Did you try 99 cents, and did it do anything for you? Is anyone selling well at $6.99 or above?
I think it’s going to be hard for indie authors to charge more than $5-6 if they don’t already have a reader base established and if they haven’t sold enough copies to get to the point where Amazon is recommending their books to readers. What 99 cents can do is help you sell a lot of copies and get you to both of those points. You can charge more and get there but it takes a lot longer.
The pricing question seems to be a popular one lately hasnt it? I think the only true answer is; it depends.
The priceing suggestions seem to range from one extreme to the other. I’m happy to see that nobody is advocating priceing close to or above the trade publishers yet.
I think most people are making their choice based on the size of their backlist, so your post raises a good question. I think everyone will just have to factor in their type of book and what they have to support it before they make the decision. I imagine its easier to price your book higher if you already have a successfull backlist holding you up.
But the ever elusive sweet spot seems to change as fast as people try to chase it down. I hope some of the DOJ action serves to stablize the market some. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Nice post Lindsay 🙂
I think it’s been popular since the day Amazon first opened it’s self-publishing portal! I know it’s been a hot topic for as long as I’ve been e-publishing. 😉
This fellow did an interesting post earlier in the week about adjusting his pricing on a regular basis to keep his books in Top 100 categories (for better visibility): http://thewritingbomb.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-keep-your-book-in-top-100.html
As the writer, you have to decide what your goal is. Most of us are still wrapping our heads around the idea of making a living from our books. For us, maximizing profit is what matters. It’s okay to care about something else more, but then don’t complain about income.
The real question to ask is, what do readers think it’s worth? Deciding the quality of the work is “at least X” is either a bit arrogant or childish. I think I’m fit to be president, but so what?
Readers are willing to pay more when:
The book is really good.
The book is longer than usual.
The book is unique in a good way.
They love the author’s other books.
They have cash to spare.
Probably more.
If you can think of several reasons your reader would pay more for a book, go ahead and raise the price.
I do think one thing that authors should think about more than price is their books initial presentation to the customer. I hear many new authors talking about how they have to price their first published title low because many won’t want to take a chance on a self-published title that is priced too high or at the same level as other bestselling titles. The problem I have with this reasoning is that many of the readers out there won’t just automatically know it is a self-published title unless it is pointed out to them in some way, say by a crummy cover or a description that doesn’t read well (and has typos in it, which I see a lot of), or some other flaw that is easily noticed. If the newly self-published / independent writer does a good job at making their titles look like they belong next to the other bestselling titles, and then have it priced the same, then chances are the average reader isn’t going to know any different.
It’s usually that if you are a new author, it’s smart to price low and as demand for your books go up; start increasing the price. This put a little pressure on me, since I started out with a strategy to serialize my books. As the books came out I gradually increased my prices, which helped me earn a living after 3 years of building up a modest catalog. I found my sweet spot to be 3.99. I have experimented with 4.99;but it’s school and Christmas shopping time and this tends to be the slow season for books. So I gradually drop prices until tax time and go back to regular pricing with more products.
Yeah, I’ve read author blogs talking up how a writer should value their work. Not pricing too low. But the ultimate arbiter of value is the buyer.
We write, they decide.
I’d rather have my book read by many than left on the virtual shelf.
As you said, experiment.
As a reader, I’m more willing to pay $2.99 and up for an e-book these days. I think so many indies put their work up at 99 cents that it almost became meaningless. Adding even a buck or two says “This is indicative of the high quality you’d expect from ANY book–indie or trad.” Just my humble opinion, of course. 🙂
99 cents worked well when there were only a few folks doing it, but there are scads of titles at that price point any more, so it’s hard to stand out.
I do think a higher price may lead people to think the book is of better quality (especially if the cover art is solid), though I’ve obviously had a lot of folks try my freebies, so people must like a bargain too. I think the “list price” for EE is $4.95, so it looks like it’s marked down on sale rather than simply worthless, er, $0.00 to start with. 😛
Perosnally, I won’t buy an ebook from an author who has not already impressed me somehow. There are some spectacular indie books out there, but there are a lot of flops, too. Some of those flops have fantastic presentation. A higher price will not convince me that a work is higher quality. Give me something to go on first. It doesn’t have to be a free book. A good blog or being friendly on other social medias will do it. =0) At least offer a free sample that takes more than 15 minutes to read.
I like the sample pages you can get with ebooks, as that’s often enough time to connect with the characters (or not). Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t let you choose how much of a sample you want to give away. It’s just based on a %, so a shorter work means a short sample.
Before e-readers, I usually found new authors through the library, and only after I’d decided I liked them that way did I go on to buy their books. I think it’s hard for indies *and* traditional authors to get people to lay down money for their books without offering ways for people to “try before you buy.”
I’ve sold a few hundred copies at $4.99 with my first title, “Resistance.” Sales seem to be tapering off, so I’m thinking of dropping it to $3.99 for a month to see what happens. One factor that hasn’t been mentioned yet–you want to price it just high enough that people will value it and want to read it. If you price something at $.99, you may get a lot of sales but not a lot of those people going on to read the book.
There have been several occasions where I have waited eagerly for the next book in a beloved series to come out, only to not buy it when it does. Why? Price. It really depends on how much I love the author, but I can count on one had the number of times I’ve exceeded $6. For certain genres (romance, mystery) I won’t exceed $4. I love you and your books, but $6.99 would require the most incredible Amaranthe/Sicarius scene……
So, just to be clear, I can raise the prices if I include a love scene? 😀
It had better be a damned good one! But…. YES!
I have to agree with Deanna. $6.99 and I’m not buying your book….I might as well buy a traditional published book at $7.99. One of the main reasons I read indies is the price difference. Its funny that you reference Dean W. Smith…His wife Kristin Kathryn Rusch has a sci-fi detective novel series (retrieval Artist) that I enjoyed the first few of priced at 2.99 to 4.99….then a few months ago she jacked her prices up on these books to up to $7.99 for the latest one….hell no!!!! So I bought them through amazon’s resellers market for $4 paperbacks (and that included shipping). So the net result was no money for her….consider that when you consider $6.99
Yeah, I stopped buying Kathryn Rusch for the same reason…. There’s no book that I can’t find used within a month of its release. So why pay a premium for an ebook today when I can buy a cheaper physical book tomorrow?
This article came at the perfect time! We’re releasing our debut novel on Monday and have been debating the price. Our first ebook was a collection of 3 short stories so we charged 99c. Our 2nd was 10 stories so we charged $2.99 (mainly for the royalties) for the novel we were thinking $3.99. We think that’s a fair price for a novel and we know our loyal readers would probably not be able to afford more than this. As they’re the ones who read our stuff, we try to tailor the pricing to their budgets. We’d never pay $6.99 for an ebook so wouldn’t expect others to pay it for ours.
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Your articles are excellent. Thank you.
Dilruba
I like the thoughts here but took a slightly different approach. I wanted the price to reflect the theme of the book.
http://www.streetsofgold.la/blog/2015/9/17/the-price-of-a-book-why-streets-of-gold-costs-524