Friday, July 27, 2012

The Paradigm Shift - eBook Pricing

I've seen many articles relating to how to price eBooks. I've had feedback on how The Adventures of Reztap eBook is priced ($4.99) where the paperback is $12.95. That is about a 62% discount - which seems to be in line with other pricing I've seen.

On the high side, there has been some discussion about $9.99 being the average price for a fiction eBook. I would venture that is also an average couple of more pages than my mdoest entry at 180 pages. Still, I don't think there are an average 360 pages to all those fiction eBooks, so the pricing still seems more than fair from that standpoint.

However, I have also seen articles and stories about pricing the eBook at $2.99. This is the minimum pricing at which the author can still get a 70% royalty on Amazon, so I think that is whre this bottom line pricing figure has emerged from. If you go below $2.99, your royalty drops to 35%. On Amazon, you can't price below $0.99. You can get free eBooks onto Amazon by offering them free elsewhere (like Smashwords) and Amazon finds out and "price matches" your eBook. But that's not a tried and true method; it's just what I've heard. If you enter the KDP Select program, that is a zero cost for your eBook for Prime members, while the author gets a piece of a $600,000 pie - really only about $2 per book checkout by the Prime member.

In the interest of testing, I'm going to drop my eBook to $2.99 on Amazon and Smashwords. This first book is all about discovering what works and what doesn't. It may take a while for the price change to filter out to the other platforms that get the digital eBook from Samashwords (Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Diesel, etc.) I will let you, my intrepid companions on this ePublishing adventure, know what the outcome of the price change is. Be warned, the price changes set may not take effect for a few days - I've already taken steps to change the prices - for instance, now the eBook is unavailable on Amazon until they review the eBook again, a process which could take up to 48 hours.

Other strategies include giving the first book in a series away free to drive sales of other books in the series. Unfortunately, the other books in my series have yet to be written/published, so it doesn't so much apply to me at this time. In a year, that will be a different story and a different blog post.

Happy Pricing!
Artemus

You can download The Adventures of Reztap from Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes (look in iBooks on iPhone or iPad), Barnes and Noble, Kobo and Diesel.

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