Pricing Your Books Part 2: How Should You Price Your Self-Published E-Book?

To continue our discussion on pricing when it comes to self-publishing, another important factor to keep in mind (quite possibly the more important one in the digital age) is how to price your self-published e-book. As Midnight Publishing has mentioned, being a self-published author is essentially running your own company: you have to think about price points, marketing, whether high prices or low prices are better, discounts and specials, and much, much more. It can be quite overwhelming, which is why we are here to help—Midnight Publishing has been serving the Phoenix area and across the globe for over eight years with all editing, marketing, and self-publishing or hybrid publishing needs. Contact us today to discuss how we can better prepare you for your author and publishing journey! But for now, let’s dive into tips on how to price your self-published e-book:

Identify your goals:

1) Acquiring readers

2) Making money

3) Both (but which one is more important?)

According to Written Word Media’s post, there are several price points that have proven effective when it comes to identifying and pursuing certain goals with pricing your e-books. If you want to acquire the most readers, then research shows that a $0.99 price point will result in the most downloads (and subsequently/hopefully the most readers). However, if you want to make the most money (especially on Amazon, which only allows authors to receive 70 percent in royalties if the book is priced at $2.99 or higher—$1.99 and $0.99 books only allow authors a 35 percent royalty rate), then $4.99 appears to be the best price point for selling a good amount of books (though far less than with a lower price point) while making the most in profit. It appears that readers are willing to pay around five bucks for a book they deem worthy, and you make the most money that way. Any higher may turn readers away, and lower doesn’t accrue as much profit.

So what if you want to make the most in profit but still gain a lot of new readers?

Then try pricing the book at $2.99 (so you get Amazon’s 70 percent royalty) or $3.99. It’s not as high as the $4.99 or more mark, but you’re still making around two dollars a book and the lower price point is going to attract new readers who will be willing to take a chance on your book.

High or low? Also known as the “$0.99 trap”:

Is it better to price your book at $0.99 in the long run? If you’ve ever taken an economics class (or just done a little digging into the psychology of selling), then you’ve probably heard of “perceived value.” Essentially, as buyers we tend to perceive the value of something based on price (to an extent)—thus, someone who is deciding between a $0.99 e-book or a $2.99 e-book may very well choose the more expensive book, because they will perceive that the book’s quality is higher, it’s lengthier (they’re getting “more” for the money), it has a better cover, more in-depth editing and will provide the reader with an overall better reading experience. As authors and business owners, self-publishers need to toe that line between acquiring new readers while also maintaining a high perceived value for their books—so Midnight Publishing cautions against pricing a book that low unless it’s for a limited time and coincides with another type of discount or special, like Amazon’s Kindle Countdown Deals.