#100: How Should You Price Your Book?

Read Time: 4 Minutes

If you've been in the publishing world for any length of time, you would have seen a whole array of pricing strategies:

→ The $0.99 Box Set

→ The $0.99 Series Starter

→ The $9.99 (Kindle) Standalone Book

→ The Traditionally Published $14.99 For A Single Kindle Book

And everything in between.

There's no "magic formula" for pricing, but what I will say is that pricing impacts your bottom line, your Amazon Bestseller Rank, your profitability and your organic sales.

All of this has a knock-on effect to readthrough, reviews, email subscribers, etc.

So pricing isn't a set-it-and-forget tactic.

In my eyes, it's a integral part of being an author and something that needs to be tested with your books and your audience.

The Cost of Low-Price Books

Starting with low-price books, and by low-price, I'm talking about $0.99 books, even free books.

On the plus side, $0.99 books require readers to have some skin in the game; they're not going galavanting round Amazon collecting up tonnes of free books that will forever sit on their TBR (To Be Read) shelf.

Readers who pay even $0.99 are much more likely to buy a $2.99, $3.99, $4.99+ book from you; far more likely than a reader who has downloaded a book of yours for free.

Yes, $0.99 books can shift a lot of copies in a short space of time, as can free books.

And, on Amazon specifically, a lot of sales results in an improved Amazon Bestseller Rank which in turn leads to more organic visibility and sales.

The downside to all of this though is your profits; especially if you're running ads to the $0.99 or free book, as you'll only receive 35% of that $0.99. So all of a sudden, that $0.99 sale has turned into a $0.35 sale.

You can do the maths on how many sales you need to make even $100 per day.

If you're a non-fiction author and you have products and services on the back-end of your book, then you might be more than happy for your free or $0.99 book to be a loss-leader.

But if you're a fiction author, and your sole source of revenue is from book sales, a $0.99 or free book may not make sense – especially if you don't have a deep series or a huge backlist.

The Cost of High-Price Books

Pricing books at $2.99 - $9.99 (and we're talking Kindle books here, not print books), moves you into the 70% royalty bracket, meaning your earnings per sale have suddenly rocketed compared to the 35% royalties of books priced below $2.99.

So, you'll need fewer sales to pocket more royalties.

Although this sounds great on the surface, earning more royalties, ads being more profitable, etc, there is a downside.

Naturally, a higher priced book (generally) shifts fewer copies than a lower priced book.

It's a volume game and lower priced products attract more buyers; just look at the carnage that ensues in shopping malls and stores on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

So, with a $4.99 Kindle book, for example, you'll earn around $3.49 minus the delivery fee.

But, you'll likely sell fewer copies than if you were to price that book at $0.99.

And with fewer copies sold, your Amazon Bestseller Rank won't be as strong, resulting in less visibility and fewer organic sales.

What's An Author To Do?

You can see the conundrum:

Higher priced books = more royalties but less visibility and organic sales

Lower priced books = less royalties but more visibility and organic sales

Look, there's no right or wrong with any of this; you need to test different price points for your books and your audience; you're never going to know unless you test.

Until you test, the result of every pricing strategy is just a hypothesis.

Ultimately, pricing your book comes down to your goals and asking yourself questions such as:

→ What is the purpose of your book? (leads, series starter, profit, etc.)

→ Do I need to make a profit on the book?

→ Will I benefit from readthrough to other books in my catalog if I make a loss on this book?

For what it's worth (and take this with a pinch of salt)...

I'd recommend a bit of a hybrid model for fiction authors and non-fiction authors who need to make a profit exclusively from their books:

Price your Kindle book between $2.99 and $9.99 to benefit from the 70% royalty rate (because advertising isn't getting any cheaper).

You can then run occasional promotions, dropping your prices to $0.99 for a limited period of time to benefit from the boosted organic visibility and bringing new readers into your ecosystem.

If you're happy to use one or more of your books as loss-leaders, "losing money" on the first sale, but making it up with readthrough (fiction authors, generally) or products/services on the backend of your book (non-fiction authors), price your book at $0.99, especially in the beginning to get traction and sales as quickly as possible.

And remember that price is more than just a price; it's also, whether you like it or not, displaying the perceived value of your book.

If you saw a 2025 Ferrari for sale for $2,500 with 100 miles on the clock, you would, quite rightly, be very wary of it; you'd be asking "...what's wrong with it?"

The same can be true for books. Price indicates perceived value to a reader.

That's not to say price your books as high as possible because they are immensely valuable; this is just something to think about.

On a final note... the price of your book can be changed at any time. You are in full control of your pricing.

I encourage you to test different price points and pricing strategies on a single book, a single series or across your entire catalog.

Take everything you hear and read about pricing strategies with a necessary dose of skepticism and test different price points for 2-4 weeks (depending on the amount of traffic your books are receiving).

Take what's useful, leave what isn't, and design your pricing strategy based on what actually works for your books and your readers.

You're building a business at the end of the day; businesses rely on sustainable royalties, not flash in the pan bestseller status.

That's it for this week. Thank you so much for reading; see you next Saturday and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

To Your Success
– Matt