So, about Ebook pricing...

[Chanel]

So I've read many articles/threads on the subject of eBook pricing and have come across many different opinions. Some self-published authors say it's a bad idea to price any eBook under 2.99 if you want to be taken seriously, while some readers say they won't take a chance on an unknown author with a list price of 3.99 or up.

I was going to go with a 2.99 price but decided on 3.99 just to see how well it went. I have sold mostly paperbacks, so I can't say just yet if my 3.99 price is working for me or not. I was planning on giving it another month or two of sales, and I will go down to 2.99 just to see if there is an increase of sales.

I also didn't see any detail regarding genre or page count when these people were discussing what a good or bad list price is. My book being a Young Adult novella, I didn't want to go too high with my target audience being mostly teenagers.

 

[tinkerdan]

Mine are at 3.99 regularly but the sell better when they are free.
Sell?
Anyway I think Amazon favors 3.99 and up; however they would like a lower cap than the traditional publishers use.

 

[Chanel]

update!

I lowered my eBook price from 3.99 to 2.99, and I've sold a few more copies since. I think as a self-published author it's better to keep your eBook at 1-3 bucks if you want people who aren't familiar with your work to take a chance at buying it. Seems to be working so far.

 

[Overread]

A few thoughts

1) There's always an active part of any online community that will scream/cry/shout for cheaper prices on nearly anything, in fact most of them will call out any argument they can cite until your price is free. Computer games tend to get this worse than ebooks; but in general this vocal group will cry out for free the whole time.

2) Cheap can sell more volume, but without marketing and without a fanbase to help push sales chances are cheap just means that you're undercharging. Remember if you price at X amount then everyone who can afford and justify X can buy at that price; as soon as you go down from X you expand your market, but you also lose out on all those who would justifiably pay X. That's why you don't see DVDs or games or "serious" books downprice to the lowest price at launch.

3) Personally I find that if a book is super cheap it makes me sceptical. If its the first in a long series, fine its the author enticing me into the series; if its the first and one of many books by the author its again an enticement; but if its all out there on its own and its only got a handful of reviews and stars then one has to wonder if its got any quality; if the author has faith in their creation.

4) Marketing is HARD. Esp if your self published, you'd be well advised to read up and do research and to tie into as much social media and advertising you can. Better to have a higher price; market yourself well then have discount periods tied into specific sale periods. A short term sale coupled with marketing is likely more successful than just pricing yourself low to start with.

 

[Serendipity]

I recently published what I can only call a booklet, put together as a Christmas present for several of my friends. Here it is best to put the price as low as Amazon allow!

I suspect others who have similar reasons for publishing would go for the lowest possible price - and there will be some very specialist publications among them - a contributory reason why people may not wish to look through these types of books.

Otherwise the advice above seems pretty sound to me...

 

[chongjasmine]

I think 2.99 is a reasonable price for ebooks. Especially self-published ones.

 

[Overread]

In photography forums the question of what price to set oft comes up as one gets new people getting into the business. One thing that keeps coming up is the idea of cheap/freebie prices in order to generate sales and get customers.

Work for exposure; working for cheap early as you build yourself up; working for less because you only work at weekends; etc...

And here's the thing; there's a market for cheap, but very few people can actually profit from the market for cheap. Super cheap prices work for supermarkets because they can profit from the vast number of sales. For a writer unless you're investing a lot into advertising, chances are you're not going to benefit from super cheap prices. Amazon will because they can see books as a single block, an individual author doesn't have to sell well, they just need a lot of authors to sell; so super cheap works for them, but not always for you.

Another aspect is that if you start out cheap you sort of set yourself up at a price point and thereby its questionable/trickier to then up your prices later as you "get more serious" about things. You wouldn't expect to see Game of Thrones sold at £0.50 per book, so why should your book be set at low prices? If you've got faith in your product and you've produced it to a high level of quality it should surely command the same price as others on the market.

Now granted if you've got a series out you might well market yourself a cheap weekend where book 1 is dirt cheap; an enticement to get those on the fence into reading and then have them pick up the rest of the series at full price.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I do better around 4 quid. I don't get additional sales but haven't dropped many, I get a bigger spike when I do sell one and, for anyone wanting a bargain, Waters and the Wild (which is with a publisher) is cheaper and can be the try-it-and-see intro.