So, for my first Indie Life post, my stats.- Self-published my first book, Disciple, Part I, in November, 2012.
- Disciple, Part II, followed April 1, 2013.
- Next up: Disciple, Part III. I haven't set a release date yet.
I want to put down a few thoughts about pricing. Initially, I was asking 4.99 for Disciple, Part I. A few got sold at that price.
Then Part I was featured in Storybundle.com's December offering and I moved a heck of a lot more -- at about 75 cents apiece.
I dropped its price down to 1.99 for Valentine's day, then briefly to 99 cents for the Equinox sale and Tolkein Reading Day. Currently, Part I is 1.99 and it has sold a bit (since Part II was released, which may be why.)
Pricing a self-published book is an interesting thing. You've got one side of your brain arguing that a lower price will be more attractive to customers. Another side of your brain is hoping to get a paycheck at some point. Your dark side is arguing that nobody's going to want to pay money for this and you should just give it away -- maybe they'll pay for the next one.
I had a friend, in high school, who took the advice of a fellow artist and added a zero to the asking price of his watercolor paintings. My friend was just another young painter producing nice stuff and asking $20 or so for them. Bump that up to $200 and... people started paying more attention to his work.
99 cents, nowadays, is a risky price for a book -- any book, from what I've heard. It's a good sale price, for a limited time, but as a standard price it implies the book's not worth much. And while it can be argued that 99 cents makes it an impulse buy, I don't know if books follow the same rules as those cheap little trinkets clustered around a store's cash register. If a book's sample isn't up to my par, I'm not downloading it at any price.
On the other hand, major publishing houses can slap a $12 price tag on an ebook and what are you going to do about it?
What's a good book worth? Trick question: it's priceless. I've settled on 1.99 for Part I and 4.99 for Part II -- economical, but not cheap. What have your experiences with self-pricing been?
4 comments:
My first book just went up last week, so I haven't done much with playing with book prices. I priced mine at $0.99, mostly because it's a novella and that generally seems to be standard novella pricing. I've occasionally seen novellas priced at $1.99, but that seems a little steep to me. Eventually when I get something longer up I'll probably try out $2.99 and see what sells.
Being of the flat broke persuasion, I like when books are priced cheap because it means I can actually buy them. I've pretty much stopped buying traditionally published books except for when they're on sale because I just can't afford them. There's tons of great indie stuff that fits my three dollar budget, so why spend more?
I price short stories at $0.99, novellas at $2.99, and novels at $4.99. I currently have my novella on sale for $0.99, but that doesn't seem to be making a difference.
Experimentation is key for indie authors - not just for their own books, but over time, as the market changes.
The first novel in my series? 2.99 - I found I made the same amount of money at 3.99, but with less sales. At 99cent, I made six times less money, but only had twice as many sales. Economics won there. But for Bk#2 and #3? 3.99 - why? Because sales are the same at either price. I think it's because once they're in for the first book, I'm no longer an "unknown" author and readers are willing to pay more.
For my novellas and serial episodes - 99cents each, $2.99 for a 3-episode bundle. It's working so far...
@Susan - I agree, having that second book out seems to make a difference all by itself. Which I'd heard before -- that having a backlist helps -- but it's interesting to see it in action.
@Jennifer - I'm of the flat broke persuasion too :) and it keeps me sifting through the self-published slush pile looking for the gems.
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