During some recent email exchanges with an author friend, we were discussing some of her essays and short stories that were selling better on Kindle at $2.99 than they were at just .99 cents. This got me to wondering if unlike bargains in a physical dollar store, pricing in the online Ebook market could be a direct reflection on quality.
First, the most obvious benefit of a $2.99 list price falls in the hands of the author. Kindle (KDP) allows you to earn a 70% royalty but the minimum price must be at least $2.99.
I decided to do a search on Amazon in the Kindle category for “99 cents” just to see what would come up first. Surprisingly, it was a free book called Falling Star by Diana Dempsey, normally priced at 99 cents but currently free probably from a KDP promo. It has 146 reviews and was published in paperback and mass market by Onyx in 2002. The author is listed as the publisher of the Kindle version (2011). It currently ranks #7 in Contemporary fiction as of this post. But I also discovered “99 cents” and “99 cents kindle” in its tags on Amazon.
My search was followed by two more 99 cent books, a $2.99 book – also tagged with “99 cents,” two more 99 cents titles, and then a $3.99 priced book – surprisingly not tagged “99 cents.” An array of other 99 cents titles finished out the first two pages of the search, some tagged with 99 cents and some not.
When I searched “$2.99,” the first four books that came up in the search were priced accordingly. None of them were titles published this year. The first three were not even on any best seller lists. The fourth was #35 in Contemporary Romance. The fifth was…you guess it…priced at 99 cents, but also not on any bestseller list, and not even tagged 99 cents.
You can probably chalk most of this up to the random beauty of Amazon.com’s highly stylized search function. I could probably perform the same searches tomorrow and discover completely different books. But this is also the beauty of Amazon searching anyway. Each search is unique and different, catering to your preferences based on your previous searches, likes, reviews, and even your purchases. Yep, Big Brother Amazon is watching, and collecting your information too. But even a Google search for an image to use with this post retrieved several Ebook pics and posts as well.
So, should indie authors consider pricing their books at 99 cents to gain readership? Based on my findings so far, I’d say probably not. I got bored of viewing my 99 cent search after just about the first two or three pages because every cover looked like something that was either a mystery, a romance, or something put out through Publish America. Let’s just say clip art websites are really profiting from these titles, not the authors! As a shopper, while I can appreciate how far a buck can go, I’m still willing to pay more for a good quality buck. I paid $11.99 for a new release Ebook earlier this week – which was more than the discounted paperback, but I would have paid more than the Ebook price after shipping.
I say don’t sell yourself short. Don’t be afraid of pricing your Ebook at at least $2.99 so you can at least benefit from the 70% royalty. If you are exclusive to Amazon in order to meet their KDP lending guidelines, then don’t be afraid of a $3.99 or $4.99 price. Since Kindle allows you to change your price practically overnight, don’t be afraid to adjust your price to coincide with marketing specials. Run a big campaign on your blog, Facebook, and Twitter announcing that your book will be available for 99 cents for just one day. Don’t forget to use appropriate hash tags on Twitter while doing so. Record your sales before and during the campaign to see how well it worked. And don’t forget to change your price back once the campaign is over.
If you are Kindle exclusive, don’t forget you have 5 days in which you can run a FREE promotion for your book every 90 days. I have had much success utilizing this feature by running 1 or 2 free promo days at a time. My latest book maintains a Kindle price of $2.99 and I received 80+ firm sales after the promo wrapped up. At a 70% royalty for those sales, I ended up with a nice little bank by the end of the month that I was quite proud of.
My point here is you shouldn’t rely on bargain pricing to sell your book for you. If pricing is a quality issue to readers out there, don’t be afraid of raising your Ebook price a few bucks. Give yourself plenty of room to fluctuate if needed, and be proactive about it. Save the 99 cent option for special marketing days only which you should promote aggressively. And if you are KDP exclusive, don’t spend all of your 5 promo days at once. Break them up, record and study the results, and again, promote aggressively.
