SFFMP 59: Pricing Ebooks for Success (and sales!)

Group Discussion, Podcast

On today’s show, we discussed just about everything we could think of related to ebook pricing. What should the standard price for a novel be? Is it ever worth doing a 99-cent ebook launch? Should you ever price an ebook above $5? What’s the point where you can maximize income? How long after launch should you wait to run a sale? Are we past the era where pricing at 99 cents can help a book to “stick” on Amazon? Should you do anything different with your pricing when it comes to international markets?

All of these topics and many more are in the show, so take a listen!

Also, for those interested in Patty’s group SF/F/H promos, you can sign up on her site.

 

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4 comments

  • Patty Jansen
    December 10, 2015 at 4:52 am

    Thanks for mentioning me.

    There was something else that struck me about this episode.

    Since I live in Australia, a non-standard country, I have to say that we’re very much used to seeing “weird” prices on books. A price ending in .99 tells me only one thing: the seller has adjusted the price to arrive at this level. I’m making a very strong assumption that the seller is not going to reduce the price too far to arrive at something ending in .99. Hence, I’m *probably* being gouged. On the other hand, I can buy a large long black (=Americano) plus a Danish in the middle of LA for $5. In Australia, just the coffee would set you back $5, never mind the Danish. This is great for staying slim, btw.

    I have also been doing 99c new releases. I release at 99c, and notify only my mailing list., I keep the price there for 24 hours. I tell them that this is the only time they’ll be able to get it for that price, ever, unless it’s the first volume in a series (and I’m doing all 4th, 5th and 6th volumes at the moment). I make the 99c release a selling point for people to put themselves on my mailing list. You can see how this works on my website.

    I managed to launch my last release (book 5 in a series) at inside the 10k at Amazon. The title is in Select, so it drove up the page reads of all the previous volumes. I’m fine-tuning my process for when I finally start a new series.

    • SFFpodcast
      December 11, 2015 at 2:41 pm

      So that’s why all the Aussies were so slim when I visited. No Danishes!

      Thanks for sharing what you’re doing with the 99-cent releases, Patty!

  • Edwin
    December 10, 2015 at 9:03 am

    A quick hello from the obscur country called Canada.

    Whenever I hear someone talk about how pricing devalues a product I find myself asking for who? As a writer I am concerned about 2 factors, the readers satisfaction and my net return. Pricing is all about finding a fair balance between the two.