One of the more fun parts of self-publishing a book is deciding how much you want to charge. If you charge at least $2.99 on Amazon you can get 70% of the royalties. That's a spicy meatball! If you actually sell books that is. Sorry to end on a preposition there, but that is the rub. Getting people to “take a chance on you.” Yes, now that ABBA song is floating through my head.
I choose $5 for my e-book. I thought that $5 was not that much these days (about the price of a fast food meal) and people would take a chance for that amount of money. Not really. I liked the idea of a straight amount, showing I was trying to be an honest sales person. I have always thought the 99 cent concept as misleading. And, don't get me started with gas prices, $3.15.99 is a good price in Tucson and in the country right now. You know why I added the extra .99 right? The real price is $3.16 but you are enticed by 3.15(.99). It seems to be a shared delusion. But, I digress.
We have decided to use Smashwords.com for the rest of the distribution of The Chronicles of IDIOT. With this service, we can publish to Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple, plus a few others. Now, I have heard that to publish with Apple (which we would do through Smashwords.com) our price HAS to end in .99 cents. Seriously? So, I may be changing the price of my book. I may go down to $2.99 to stay in the Amazon 70% royalty territory. I have also been flirting with going all the way down to $0.99. Why? I want my book to actually sell! That and I could enter my book in the Amazon Singles and (if chosen) be added to a pretty exclusive book club. (I know, but I can't stop being an optimist). But, I can't now because the publication has to be priced between $0.99-$4.99. Yes, it is ONE MEASLY CENT that is holding me back. And of coarse, my mother said “Well if you are only going to sell your book for $5, why don't you sell it for $4.99?” Thanks, Amazon, my mother gets to say she was right. Again.
But, there are those that say you are diminishing the value of your book by selling it for so little. Yes, but you are actually selling it, so it is a double edge sword. And, I would like to just pick a price and stick with it, not fling the price around like a creepy Walmart smiley face. I know some authors that seem to be doing that, where they lower their price to $0.99 to attract customers, then jack up the price when they see some sales.
My husband is an avid coffee drinker, it is what keeps him going through the day. He stopped drinking coffee last week because his supplier jacked up the price for the new semester. I know e-books are not cups of coffee (just the price of a good cup of coffee) and it is a one off purchase, but I don't want to upset the people who paid a certain price for it, just to see the price go down. The thing is that I would not be pissing off too many people right now. Although those people are friends and family. Everybody's favorite people to anger. What to do?
Well, I am going to be joining this .99 cent club no matter what, so it has been decided to go with the e-book price of $2.99. Tell your friends!
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