Amazon is the only
major ebook seller that requires ebooks to have a minimum price of
$.99. They will, however, match the price of the books their
competitors offer – at their discretion. For the most part they
have matched the free price of my books. Some two years ago they
decided not to price match The Bright Black Sea (then priced
at $3.99), and in the six months before the release of Castaways
of the Lost Star, I sold something like 10 copies. This month
they have again decided not to price match both The Bright Black
Sea, my “best seller” and Some Day Days, my slowest
seller. While I would rather just give my books away, I’m cool with
that, since they have, over the last nearly three years, kindly
matched my free price (in the US). I can’t complain.
Now, if I could sell
a copy a day, at $.99 I’d be very happy – that would put me in
the upper 5 - 6 % of indie authors on sales volume. I’d accept half
that sales figure. But below that, I think I could find a better use
for my prices on Amazon.
I view the price of
a book as a marketing decision. I chose FREE because I could “sell”
a hundred times the books I could sell if I put a price on them, even
as low as $.99. And I could get a hundred times the ratings and
reviews, which I value. And although I’ve no intention of making a
career of writing, if I was, I’d likely follow the same strategy –
the Amazon strategy of losing money early to build a long term
business. (Especially since it would be pocket change.) However,
there are some people who think the price of a book is a self-awarded
badge of excellence. If an author doesn’t charge money for their
book, or very little, they think it is because the author doesn’t
think highly of it. I really doubt that this is the case. You don’t
publish something for everyone to read that you think stinks – no
one needs that kind of grief. This snobbish attitude also extend to
readers. I’ve come across postings on blogs were the readers of
free books are disparaged, not worth a real author’s efforts. I
don’t know how widespread this attitude, this misconception, is, but
just in case it is widespread, I can now do something to address it. I can
raise my list prices on Amazon.
So what should I
charge for my books, if I want them to reflect my self-awarded badge
of excellence? Prior to listing all of them at $.99, I had them at
$1.99 for Some Day Days, $2.99 for A Summer in Amber,
and $3.99 for The Bright Black Sea. These are standard
indie-published prices. But… well, I think my books are better than
the standard indie-published book, so if price reflects quality, I
really should price them out of the common indie range. Right? $9.99
is the highest price one can set and still get Amazon’s 70%
royalties, so most ebooks stay under that limit. However, big
publishers charge between $12 and $15 or more for their new releases,
and my books are certainly as good as theirs, so perhaps I’d best
follow their lead and price my books in similar fashion. I can afford
to turn a blind eye to the fact that pricing them over $9.99 will
actually bring me less money because I know that they will actually
bring me no money. So, with that thinking here is my new
Amazon Price List, effective 1 Feb. 2018:
Some Day Days: ebook $5.50 177 page trade paperback $9.00
A Summer in
Amber: ebook $8.50 276 page trade paperback $12.00
The Bright Black
Sea: ebook $12.50 703 page trade paperback $25.00
The Lost Star’s
Sea: ebook $12.50 723 page trade paperback $25.00
All of the ebook
versions will remain FREE in all the other stores, Kobo, iBook,
Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. Hopefully Amazon will soon go
back to matching their competitor's prices for all books. But that
will be up to them.
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