Some Notes on Pricing

I went down this rabbit hole, so I might as well add a few comments

About 10 or 12 years ago, there was a lot of research done on ebook pricing. One of the biggest sources was the then owner of Smashwords (Mark Coker), who had access to all of their data and therefore a lot of stuff to back up his claims with. Over the next several years some trends were noticed in other things, which influenced some categories. I also did some research of my own to disprove other myths in the ebook publishing world.

I’d like to share what I’ve learned with the rest of you here. I like to disclaim that this only applies to scifi & fantasy (all fantasy, including urban). While most of it really does apply to ALL fiction ebooks, I have no desire to argue with the Romance authors.

Also, understand if you’re famous you often get to write your own rules.

The first bit has to do with the pricing of novels. For many years the ‘sweetspot’ for a price on a novel was $2.99 - $3.99. That was IT. If you charged more, you were losing money because you were losing sales. I heard a lot of people make a lot of claims to justify how they were right and everyone else was wrong. Well, they’re all gone now. So I think that proves just who was right.

Now, with time and inflation, a lot of folks think that shifted to $3.99 - $4.99 about four ~ five years ago. For the most part, I think that they’re right. But I still believe that for a lot of new authors, $2.99 might still be a worthwhile price for a first and maybe even second book. I priced everything at $2.99 for years. Like 5 or 6 years. Even after I was known and had fans. This encouraged a lot of people to try my books, because $3 isn’t much of a risk. I got a lot of emails from fans who told me that as well, so this isn’t guess work.

Understand when I’m talking of ranges, if you’re new, you don’t get the benefit of the range - you’re at the bottom dollar. As I’ve said before, you want sales not ‘profits-per-sale’. You’re building a rep, a fanbase, and readership. Think of it as investing - because that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Now it does seem that the range is more $3.99 - $5.99 these days. Because inflation has pushed a lot of authors who have the reputation to charge more in order to get by, however, the $3.99 price point is still a good one for newer authors.

I will tell you right now that this is the hardest decision you will make. Harder than any decision you made while writing your novel. This is why you have to kick the author OUT of the room and lock the door. If you can’t do that, you’re never going to be very successful (definitely not monetarily) as an indy author. I’m not kidding when I say this. I once sat in a room with another indy (who has been moving heavily to tradpub of late and I think that’s the right decision for them) who was whining and moaning about how they ‘couldn’t do X’, where ‘X’ was a marking thing. I offered right then and there to take care of ‘X’ for them. They refused, because of ‘artistic integrity’.

That was when I knew they’d never be rich, as an author. ‘Artistic Integrity’ is BS and I hate whoever came up with that idea. That’s like saying you can’t shovel shit the way your boss is paying you to, because of ‘Artistic Integrity’. There’s no difference, and there’s no such thing as ‘Artistic Integrity’ when you’re Working For A Living and Selling Product. You do the job you’re being paid for, if you want to get paid.

And yes, that’s another very hard lesson for some people to learn.

Now, Short Stories and everything else that isn’t a novel - and remember, anything over 39,999 words IS A NOVEL. Don’t argue. You’re wrong.

Personally I think shorts should be 99 cents. Though there was a time when things at 99 cents were getting ‘lost in the noise’ because there’s a LOT of stuff at 99 cents, as it’s the cheapest you can be. So I started charging a little bit more. Like $1.25. Just to get out of that noise. As you’ll see further down, I tend not to do that now.

Now for longer shorts and novellas, or if you’re writing some sort of niche or kink fiction, you can definitely charge more. Like $1.99 or maybe even $2.99. But…

Let’s break this down a bit. One of the problems, and this comes from Amazon who set the standard - $2.99 and up you get to keep 70% of the sales price. $2.98 and less (also $10 and more) you only get 30% of the sales price. So the difference in how much you make per sale is radically different, depending on if you’re $2.99 or $2.98.

Now if you were getting 70% at a $1.99, no one would balk at setting that price (or rather, a lot less people would balk). But the temptation to go a dollar more, because you make two dollars more, is just strong.

But the problem is, you’re not going to make a living off of shorts and novellas! (Well you can, but it ain’t easy). And there’s an additional problem - for years, and I don’t know if this is still true - $1.99 was all but invisible. People literally ignored books at that price. It was a weird phenomonon, but Mark Coker (the owner of Smashwords who as I said before, studied this heavily) put up the data showing it and we all scratched our heads and changed our prices.

There is also an assumed quality that comes with a price point. If you’re too cheap, people are going to think the book sucks. If you’re too expensive, people are going to think you suck. Did I mention yet how hard pricing decisions can be? And then of course if you’re doing novels, you don’t care about the prices of short stories (no you don’t! Bad author bad! *swats with rolled up newspaper*) shorts are now your ‘loss leaders’ so you toss them out there at 99 cents or maybe $1.09 or something. You’re putting them out to keep fans happy and engaged, so they’ll buy your novels when the next one comes out.

But if you’re going to make an error, make it on the side of a lower price. Because as always, Sales is THE name of the game.

Now a few notes on some other things:

PERMAFREE IS STUPID. Got that? Giving books away for free doesn’t earn you ANY money! Doing it as a ‘special sale’ for like a few days is kinda okay, but the odds of it making you any money are really small. If you’re going to give away books, you need to be handing them out, in person, to people you’re talking with and engaging. If you have a good backlist, then you’ll hopefully (more like probably) make some money.

Now you will run into people who will tell you that giving away your first book will lead to sales and make you money. Word of Advice? Never listen to those people again, because they’re wrong. I did the research. And I did it with a best selling series. I did it for 6 months. Then I posted the data in numerous places showing that sales went DOWN overall, and income crashed heavily¹. People don’t read free books². Well some do, but 90 percent or so don’t.

So if you’re going to have a sale, go to 99 cents or 1.99. It’s a sale, it’ll get hoopla, and everything else. But you want people to know that it has value, and you don’t want the ‘free’loaders who just download everything that’s free and never read any of it.

Pricing the first book of a series lower? Sure, go for it. But wait until you’re a few books in if you’re going to really cut it lower. Like below $2.99 lower. I look at it sort of the other way, I start off low and make the following books a little bit higher. Not out of the ballpark higher, but say $4.99 or $5.99 high. Of course I have a reputation now and fans who are all quite willing to pay $5.99. But I know most of them won’t pay $8.99. I know that for sure. So I’m not even willing to experiment with $6.99.

The last bit of advice is track your prices and your sales numbers. Track them and save the data before you make any changes. Then track after the changes and compare sales numbers and income in your pocket from before and after.

Or, conversely, sign a contract with a publisher and let them do it all for you. Just do your homework on them before you sign anything.

As for KU (Kindle Unlimited)? That is a whole ‘nother discussion, and a hard one at that.

Good luck!

1. You would have thought I’d put baby kittens in a blender and put it on puree when I posted this data. The screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth was extreme. I did this on a couple of big writing boards/forums. They couldn’t say where I was wrong, because I put up over 6 months of detailed data and graphs, but many refused to believe it. They’re all gone now btw.

2. They do however download freebooks I was once #2 in all of Germany for free books (Damn you David Hasseloff! - he was #1, obviously) but you know how much money that made me? You guessed it, nothing. There are people out there with tens of thousands of free books on their kindles, that they will never read. People do not value that which is free (quote from: John Van Stry :-)