Pricing an ebook may be one of the hardest pieces of marketing when self-publishing. After writing, editing, proofing, designing, packaging, promoting, and uploading to distribute, the next step is to decide how much to charge. Most people say it’s best to experiment with pricing, either by price pulsing or even just changing things up every few months to see what works best.
It’s a big challenge, and best practices seem to be changing constantly. A few years ago, 99 cents was considered the best price for indie ebooks, so that people would not hesitate and be able to afford trying out a new author. But now, higher prices are supposedly better, and even $1.99 may be too low.
In late 2012, Dean Wesley Smith wrote that with the changes to agency pricing, authors should price their ebooks in 2013 like this:
— Novels
Front list, meaning brand new. Over 50,000 words. $7.99
Shorter front list novels, meaning 30,000 to 50,000 words. $6.99
Backlist novels, meaning already published by a traditional publisher. $6.99
— Short Books
Short books, meaning stories from 8,000 words to 30,000 words. $3.99
— Short Stories
Short stories … 4,000 to 8,000 words. $2.99
Short stories under 4,000 double with another bonus story… $2.99
— Collections
5 stories $4.99
10 stories $7.99
However, in 2013, Digital Book World reported that 22% of readers (in a survey consisting of 3,000 people) did not want to pay more than $4.99 for a book. But 52% said if they really wanted a book, they would pay whatever it cost.
Later in 2013, Gigaom reported that Kobo Writing Life found authors should price between $2.99 to $5.99 for maximum profits. And like many others advise, it works best for high quality books.
On Random Writing Rants, author Raymond Bolton laid out his pricing strategies for 2014. He created a spreadsheet with data for best seller ranking on Amazon, book title, author name, and price. He averaged out the prices for best sellers in the sci-fi/fantasy category, and found it was $4.33. And most of the top 100 sellers were between $2.99 and $4.99.
After doing this kind of research, it’s also helpful for authors to keep track of their sales to determine if and when they should change the price. See my post, “SALES NAME” for more information on how to track ebook sales.
Cory Doctorow also reported Rachel Willmer on Luzme’s findings for best ebook prices in different territories. According to Doctorow:
One of the most interesting findings in Willmer’s work is that British readers spend more overall when books are priced around 99p, while sales to Americans are maximized when the books cost about $10. Willmer segments her customers into two groups: people who want a specific book right now, and people with a long list of books they prefer equally and who will buy whichever book is cheap at the moment (Luzme lets you make a wishlist of books and alerts you if the price for any of the books you’re monitoring goes down).
Of course, when it comes to indie ebooks, it’s best to publish high quality content often. Lindsay Buroker recommends experimenting with price, while continually churning out books.
You might also find that you have a break-out novel or two in the bunch. A couple of years ago, JA Konrath published his stats for his $140,000-month and we saw that a handful of his 40+ titles were responsible for the majority of his income. I talked about the Pareto Principle in that article, also known as the 80-20 rule. In our cases, it may very well end up that 20% of our work results in 80% of our income.
Publishing Perspectives gives some insight into the benefits of pricing higher. Kobo, for example, looks to promote books that are more expensive:
Lefebvre is advocating higher prices.
This makes perfect sense to me. Higher prices help the company make more money. Kobo’s cut of a promotional discount on a book that costs ten dollars, he’s saying, very rightly, is better than Kobo’s cut of a promotional discount on a book that costs 99 cents.
What we’re learning, then, is that the Kobovian Machinery is scanning authors’ price-promo schedulings for “gems,” which are, as we’ve learned, books the regular prices of which are high enough that a deep-discount promo will offer Toronto something worth having, say three dollars, not 30 cents.
What prices work for you? Share below in the comments!
Wow, real in-depth!
I’ve got everything from 2 perma-free books all the way up to 2 going for $9.99. Pricing is one of the hardest things to figure out and one of the quickest things people will come down on you about.
Thanks! Agree with you that pricing is hard to figure out. Sounds like you’ve got a good range though!
I decided on $5.99 for an 115,000 word novel.
Being a first time author, I thought $7.99 sounded too high and I know my work is worth more than the $.99-2.99 range that had previously worked for others.
By uploading directly to ebook retail sites, I can maintain that higher royalty rate and make over $4/book at the $5.99 price which is good enough for me.
Sounds good! Are you seeing consistent sales?
I have just released my book so I don’t have a track record on sales.
But after more than a few years of writing, editing, and publishing a novel length book, I think that self-publishers like myself should charge a ‘reasonable fee’ for that work if they have really done a quality job.
I know that exposure (i.e. the 99 cent ebook) has been the big thing in the past in creating those self-publishing ‘success stories’ and we know who they are, but I don’t think it is a good plan for the way forward.
Books have a value, to an individual and society. Don’t shortchange that.
PS What is that hideous creature to the right of my post? Is it standard on your website or just a subtle hint that I should finally get a picture of myself on these forums?
Ha! Could be interpreted as a little bit of both. It’s an auto-generated Wavatar, for people who don’t have a profile image uploaded. But by no means are you required to have a photo.
Makes sense. Please keep me posted on what’s working for you–I love hearing what other authors are doing
My first (and only, so far) e-book is a 24k word collection of essays/poetry. It came out at $4.49, which was the result of lack of communication (I was out of country and not avaiable.) I don’t believe I sold any at that price, maybe one or two (the paperback is $11.95)
After resetting the price to $2.99, there have been some good days of sale mixed in with the hit-or-miss day of sales. But it’s been close to expectations. I am moving the price up soon (either $3.49 or $3.99) to see what happens and I have a couple of promo days on blogs, etc coming out then, too. I’ll be watching to see what happens and then plan pricing for book 2 due out late summer.
Thanks for the insight with this article. Very interesting.
Thank you for sharing! Very interesting–would love to hear how the experiment goes with moving the price up.