Pricing e- books

Here is an interesting example of what happens. Daniel Arenson has just come out with a book, and it has blown up. It has sold tens of thousands of copies in the first month and a half, often being ranked above #100 overall in the US for the kindle, which is huge. He says MILLIONS of pages have been read on the lending service in that time. He has just lowered the price to 0.99 Earth Alone (Earthrise Book 1) eBook: Daniel Arenson: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store (here is the UK link)

Now why do this when you are ranked so high still? Just to get more readers? Push more to the second book which is already released and ranking super high. Not sure. He is making a lot of money, but some indie raise their price. He could be selling at 3.99+ and probably still ranking very high with the sheer volume he has moved. So there are no right answers. He has a bunch of bestsellers to his name, so perhaps just getting volume will get him to top of USA Today bestseller ranks to, so there is that to think of.

note: he also has a Tom Edwards cover, which is the guy I'm using for books, and he makes great covers!
 
Ratsy I think its true that there are no right answers; or that in truth there are several avenues of possibility. I would say lowering price if you've got a run-away best seller is a smart move. People LOATH price rises and unless you can blame it on a major economic collapse people will go hostile if you just randomly raise your prices (even if you've good reason).

For a book though lowering the price of something selling outstandingly well is a great move because now all those people are going to recommend it to their friends and with the very low price point the free marketing works because a lot on the fence get enticed in. Short term sales work the very same way; building up huge hype for the product and then discounting it.

And for a book that is part of a planned series its a very solid move because once you've got people hooked with the first it should drive sales of your second easily; a second book at a higher (more normal) price point.
 
Quellist said:
The promotion and marketting is starting now (and is taking much time and work...), and @Vertigo Liberator has been proffesionaly edited and has had good early feedback, so hopefuly wont upset anyone. Unless the dont like militaryish space-opera!
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I too love militaryish space opera. ---- After reading this thread I can see that I am the exception. Where once I would pay $20+ for a hard cover SF book, and often $12+ for a paper back. I now almost exclusively read books that are on Kindle Unlimited. Any time I see a price over $4.99, I am nearly certain to forget about it, because so much good reading can be had at much lower price points. The trade off is that where before I would read 8-10 books a year, now I read 8-10 books a month for about the same overall cost. If I see a SF book on Kindle Unlimited with audio, I will almost certainly read/listen to it. If the book is KU and the audio portion is $2.99 or under that too will usually do.
 
Well Parson, Liberator will be on kindle unlimited, no audio though I'm afraid. That may come if at some point we can afford the cost...
Looks as though we will be pricing at £2.99 UK and $3.99 US and we will work out the other territories by that guideline. That may change at the last minute, might not.
 
Seems a common strategy now for people with series to discount the first volume to 0.99 once they have more out or even do it permafree as a means to try to snare readers who will then buy the later vols.
 
Yep - and it makes sense; take a short-fall on the first book and let the rest eat up the profits. For a good author you only need one high-flying series to carry your name. You can then either keep making more and more within that setting/series or you can branch out and the strength of your name will carry your works*


*Although its interesting to note how odd people are. Take Game of Thrones; its a huge success and I'm sure has sold many volumes of his other writing; but GRRM's other writing doesn't get as much of a mention as his core work. Same for Tokien - people speak volumes of Lord of the Rings but hardly a word of Mr. Bliss. Even a big name like Terry Pratchett only carries name with Discworld - if you mention Dark side of the Sun many Pratchett fans have no idea what you're on about.
It adds argument to the use of a Pen name for subjects and styles; much as Robbin Hobb and Megan Lindholm are one and the same but very different voices in how the stories are made and crafted.
 
Vertigo, 7.
 
Tom Edwards art looks great, what sort of price range is he?
 
Overread said:
Even a big name like Terry Pratchett only carries name with Discworld - if you mention Dark side of the Sun many Pratchett fans have no idea what you're on about.
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True. Pratchett is my favourite author but I haven't yet read any of his final book (Long Earth, etc.). I don't even know why. I bought them all on release day but just let them sit.
 
The thing about pricing is that it varies from genre to genre. I made my name in erotica then romance, chasing the market as it moved (and as Amazon made it more difficult to sell certain titles). Back when I started it was possible - easy, even - to sell a well written 5k word erotic short at $2.99. By the time I quit romance it was almost impossible to get traction on a full length novel unless it was priced at $0.99 (and enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, but that's a whole different kettle of fish).

I recently moved to science fiction, and the first thing I noticed was the absence of $0.99 books in the bestseller lists. Most seem to be priced at $3.99 and up. The point is that readers develop expectation based on experience, so it's probably a good idea for authors as a group not to bow to the pressure to start price wars to gain market share.
 
It depends where you are in your writing career I guess. Those scifi books in the top 20 are more expensive because they most likely have a built in fan base who are willing to pay, rather than being successful because they cost more. With hundreds of books on promo pricing or free giveaways each day that makes the competition even harder. If there's a load of books with lots of reviews at $2.99, and yours has only a modest amount of reviews and is $3.99 or $4.99, then the buyer will most likely pass, unless they have a reason not to (eg they've heard about it already, been recommended etc).

I released my first novel a few months back and the harsh reality is that a) Amazon adds hundreds of thousands of books each year for people to choose from and b) as a new author no one knows who you are or cares who you are. If you have a high existing social media presence already (eg a blog with hundreds of hits a day, thousands of Twitter / Facebook followers) then that's a great way to start, but if you're going in cold then getting any traction at all can be slow going after the initial spike to people you know.

Still, with Amazon it's easy to adjust pricing at any time which makes experimentation fairly straightforward.

That all said, best of luck and hope it goes well! It only takes one active fan who knows someone influential and the sky's the limit!
 
All good points, Ed. I've priced my sci-fi debut (using my real name for the first time, without any help from my large romance fan base or any expensive promo) at a launch price of $0.99 just to get my foot in the door. It seems to have worked, looking at the 1-2,000 rank after the first week. The second book in the series launched (and will remain) at the regular price of $3.99, and all subsequent books in the series will launch at $3.99 too. I'm trying to find a comfortable balance between appealing to new readers who've never heard of me and protecting the pricing status quo. I watched the romance genre become a painful treadmill over the last few years, with authors desperately undercutting each other to gain visibility. It wasn't pleasant to watch :(
 
I originally released mine at 3.99, but soon dropped it to 2.99. I'll keep my first series at 2.99. Might even go free for the first one when I get all three done.

I've seen plenty of new authors go the 3.99 route on a first in series. For my next series I may go 2.99 for the first and 3.99 for second and third. Or maybe 3.99, and then 4.99 for the rest. We'll see. I have been noticing pricing going up.

At the same time I feel bad pricing at anything higher than 2.99 for a short book (60k), but 3.99 seems to be the new minimum.
 
CWScott said:
At the same time I feel bad pricing at anything higher than 2.99 for a short book (60k), but 3.99 seems to be the new minimum.
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I think of 60k as on the lower end of full novel length rather than a novella. It's been a while since I bought a paperback, but when I lived in the west I don't remember every paying less than £5 (around $7.50 at the time) for a book, and it felt like a good deal. $3.99 is pocket change in the grand scheme of things.
 
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