One of the most controversial parts of indie publishing is deciding what price to set for your books. Epublishing is so new that there isn’t any good data to base pricing decisions off of, and everyone seems to have a different feeling as to what is “fair.” Most readers (including me) agree that $12.99 is a little outrageous for an ebook, but beyond that, the opinions are all over the map.
When I published Genesis Earth, I priced it at $2.99 and haven’t changed it since. It remains my best selling novel, but at maybe 5 to 10 sales per month, that really doesn’t mean much. Besides, it’s impossible to know whether price has been the main factor in that. I briefly dropped my other novels to $2.99, and it had absolutely no effect.
My ultimate goal is to make a living off of my writing, so if my books aren’t going to sell much better at $2.99 as they are at $4.95, from a business perspective I’d rather go with the higher price. However, as a reader, I’m opposed to paying more than about $5 for an ebook, even from an author I love. Others might be willing to pay more, but if I can build a readership large enough to support myself at the $4.95 price point, I’d much rather do that.
So, after experimenting with price points and thinking things through, here’s the scheme that I think I’m going to follow:
- Short stories: $.99
- Novellas and novel installments: $1.49
- Short novels (under 90k words): $2.99
- Longer novels (over 90k words): $4.95
The important thing, of course, is to build a readership that is willing to pay for my work. I have no idea how to go about doing that, but as far as pricing goes it’s probably important to pick a scheme and be consistent. Some of my friends are doing quite well at $2.99, while Dean Wesley Smith advises charging much more, but this is the scheme that makes the most sense to me–which honestly isn’t saying much.
About the only thing I can say is that the best way to push a title is to make it free. All of my short stories were free at one point or another, and even after the initial rush was over, I was still getting around 80 to 100 downloads per week, sometimes more. I have no idea how many of those people actually read the stories, or how many of those people went on to buy my other titles, but sales did seem to be slightly better across the board when I had at least something out for free.
Now that I’ve got eight titles out, I think it may be a good idea to drop the price of at least one of them for free and keep it there permanently. David Gaughran recently featured a guest blogger who used this strategy to push her other titles at places like Barnes & Noble, which isn’t as indie friendly/agnostic as Amazon or Smashwords.
For that reason, I’ve decided to make Sholpan free again and to keep it there for the foreseeable future. It’s already available for free at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and Diesel, but Amazon hasn’t matched the price yet–and that’s where you can help me.
If you go to Sholpan’s Amazon page and scroll down to the Product Details, there’s a link that says “tell us about a lower price.” If you click on that, it asks for a link to the site that’s selling the ebook at a reduced price. If enough people fill that out, I’m hoping that Amazon’s algorithms will take notice and match the price–so if you could take a moment and do that for me, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Also, if you’ve read the novella and enjoyed it, I’d appreciate it greatly if you’d take the time to post a favorable review. Amazon has some weird thing where they copyright reviews written on their site, but for everywhere else you can just copy and paste the same review across multiple sites. And a lot of them allow you to just leave a rating without writing a review, including Goodreads (Sholpan’s page is here). I don’t want anyone to be disingenuous, of course, but if you enjoyed the book and took the time to rate it or leave an honest review, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks so much! Until next time, I’ll see you around.
