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. \u00a0However, as a reader, I’m opposed to paying more than about $5 for an ebook, even from an author I love. \u00a0Others 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.<\/p>\n
So, after experimenting with price points and thinking things through, here’s the scheme that I think I’m going to follow:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Short stories: $.99<\/li>\n
- Novellas and novel installments: $1.49<\/li>\n
- Short novels (under 90k words): $2.99<\/li>\n
- Longer novels (over 90k words): $4.95<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The important thing, of course, is to build a readership that is willing to pay for my work. \u00a0I 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. \u00a0Some of my friends are doing quite well at $2.99, while Dean Wesley Smith advises charging much more<\/a>, but this is the scheme that makes the most sense to me–which honestly isn’t saying much.<\/p>\n
About the only thing I can<\/em>\u00a0say is that the best way to push a title is to make it free. \u00a0All 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. \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0David Gaughran recently featured a guest blogger<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/thumb-Sholpan.jpg\" "\\"sidebar")
<\/a>For that reason, I’ve decided to make Sholpan<\/strong>\u00a0free again and to keep it there for the foreseeable future. \u00a0It’s already available for free at Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Kobo<\/a>,\u00a0Smashwords<\/a>, and Diesel<\/a>, but Amazon<\/a> hasn’t matched the price yet–and that’s where you can help me.<\/p>\nIf you go to Sholpan’s<\/strong>\u00a0Amazon page<\/a> 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. \u00a0If 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!<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0Amazon 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. \u00a0And a lot of them allow you to just leave a rating without writing a review, including Goodreads (Sholpan’s page is here<\/a>). \u00a0I 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.<\/p>\n
Thanks so much! \u00a0Until next time, I’ll see you around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most controversial parts of indie publishing is deciding what price to set for your books. \u00a0Epublishing 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… Continue reading Finding the right price<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,541],"tags":[89,560,515,584,637,529,555],"class_list":["post-7108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ge","category-sholpan-novella","tag-career-decisions","tag-ebook-pricing","tag-ebooks","tag-free","tag-freebies","tag-indie-publishing","tag-promotion","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1QE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7108"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7111,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7108\/revisions\/7111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}