Tag Archives: pricing

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book

One of the biggest challenges we indie authors face is pretty much the entire process of setting a price for a book. I know plenty of authors, including myself, who have spent days or weeks agonizing over which price to choose. And then once the price has been set, these same authors still wonder if they made the right decision.

I believe that while choosing the right price is a difficult part of self-publishing, it’s not something you have to do blindly. And so in this mega-post, I’m going to explore a number of ways you can gather data to help you price your book without so much second-guessing. I’ll also show you how to do market research that will give you incredible amounts of insight into what price your market expects. Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book: Case Study

Choose the Right Price Case Study

A couple of weeks ago I finished up a series on choosing the right price for your book, looking at a number of different factors that you can use when setting your price. Today, I’d like to turn all of that theory into a more real-world example with a case study.

We’re going to be looking at a hypothetical science fiction novel. This novel can also be classified into the time travel sub-genre, and it’s about 350 pages long. We’ll also say that it’s been on Amazon for a little while now and has five reviews.

What I’m going to look at in this article is the techniques from the third part in the series on choosing your book’s price. Those are the process of gathering data about similar books and doing research on what is considered a fair price by your audience. Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book: Case Study

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 3

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 3

It’s time for more ideas for pricing your self-published book! In this third part in the series, I want to show you how to look at your market to find data that will help you choose a good price. This process can be a little bit time-consuming, but it’s very much worth the effort.

Look at Similar Books

When you’re bringing your book to market, it’s important to consider the expectations of the market based on existing books for sale. It’s highly unlikely that your book is something in a completely new category, which is to your advantage. Let’s look at how you can gather data from books similar to yours to help you decide how to price your own book. Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 3

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 2

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 2

Welcome to the second part in this series on choosing the right price for your book. This time, we’re going to look at the concept of markup, specifically when it comes to pricing a paperback and leaving room in your price for sales. But first, let’s take a quick look at the concept of “pretty” pricing.

“Pretty” Pricing

“Pretty” pricing is the idea that certain prices look better to customers than others. You can obviously choose any price you want, but research has indicated that ending a price in .95 or .99 may psychologically influence customers to feel like they are getting a better deal. For that reason I will be rounding all prices in this post to the nearest .95. (Why not .99? Well, because this is “pretty” pricing and I think .95 is prettier.)

And with that out of the way, let’s look at how to choose a price for a paperback.

Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 2

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 1

How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book part 1

Today I’m starting a new series on one of the biggest challenges we indie authors face. That challenge is pretty much the entire process of setting a price for a book. I know plenty of authors, including myself, who have spent days or weeks agonizing over which price to choose. And then once the price has been set, these same authors still wonder if they made the right decision.

Well, I believe that while choosing the right price is a difficult part of self-publishing, it’s not something we have to do blindly. And so over the course of the next several posts, I’m going to explore a number of strategies for pricing your book, plus I’ll give you some ideas that will help you choose a good price for your book without quite so much second-guessing.

Before we dive into all the nitty-gritty of pricing, I think I need to spend some time talking about typical author attitudes and self-worth.

The Two Typical Attitudes of Self-published Authors

When I talk to authors about their book’s pricing, I typically see a couple of attitudes. Let’s look at each one. Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 1