ideal price for first time e-publisher?

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pennywise18

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I'm currently in the process of doing one final edit of my YA fantasy novel "Child of Dreams" before formatting it and putting it on amazon. Hopefully I can have it up in a week or so.

I was initially thinking of pricing it at $2.99, which I thought was reasonable and kind of the average. But after looking through posts on here for the past little while, I see there are some people who believe the first book should be free.

I understand the reason for this, to build interest, but it does seem odd to just give your product away for free to everyone. I'm curious what others priced their debut books at and if it proved successful or not.
 

PortableHal

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How are you going to make a profit from giving away your one and only book? (I know, I know: volume!)

Free can work -- usually if you've written a series and you want to draw attention to stories #2-10 -- but I don't see a good reason to start at $0.00.

If you want to price at $2.99, do so. Good luck!
 

maggie2

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Hi,

Typically, if you only have one book you don't give it away for free all the time. What you CAN do, if you choose, is to enroll in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select Program and then you can have 5 days in a 90 day period where you give the book away for free and you charge for it the rest of the time.

With only one book, however, I'd really consider whether or not that would be worthwhile. If you are going to do that it would probably be better to have at least 2 and preferable more books.

Some things you can do to help:

See if you can get some honest reviews. This really does seem to help to sell books.

Do some guest posts on other people's blogs. You have to ask but many blogs are always looking for good content.

Get involved in goodreads.com and create a contest around your book. This really helps.

Use Facebook and Twitter to promote the book.

Hope this helps some.

Marg
 

pennywise18

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Thanks for your guys help. I think I'm going to do as you suggested and have promotional periods where it's free, but charge around 2.99 for the most part.
 

Old Hack

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Moving this to self publishing.
 

sarahdalton

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I agree with Maggie. Don't start off free. You're sending the message that your book isn't worth buying.

Spend a month or so contacting book bloggers (you can send them free copies to review), promoting on Goodreads and gathering reviews. Build up your facebook and twitter. Then release the book at a reasonable price (look at other self-published books in your genre for pricing).

Then, when you're a little bit more established you can perhaps have 'free weekends' that you publicise.

I think this works better when you're writing a series and the other books in the series stay at full price. Then, the reader gets the first book as a taster and can choose whether to buy the second and third book at full price.

Head over to kindleboards - they talk in depth about pricing and sales.
 

Michael Davis

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Nothing says you can't experiment with prices yourself. Several have posted about their own experience with book prices. I've got one on AWC somewhere that shares my experience on the affect of price on royalities/sells (think thats the title, but its been a while). If ya can't find it I have an article on my website you can download for free. Go to bottom roll of cover art of my homepage (Davisstories.com) and click on the "So you want to write a novel" cover. It''ll take you to a list of articles I share for a workshop. Check down left side of that page. I'm sure its still available in that list.
 

Old Hack

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Nothing says you can't experiment with prices yourself. Several have posted about their own experience with book prices. I've got one on AWC somewhere that shares my experience on the affect of price on royalities/sells (think thats the title, but its been a while).

GAHHHH!!!!!!!

It's "sales", not "sells".

Sorry, but that's one of my pet peeves.

Michael, I've had a look at all the threads you've started and can't find which one you're referring to. Could you link to it, please, instead of directing traffic to your blog?

It's easy enough to find the link. If you click on your user-name in this thread and choose the option to view your own profile, then click on the "statistics" tab, you'll find an option to view all the threads you've started at AW.
 

Katie Elle

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$2.99 will get you the 70% commission at Amazon and whatever sales you lose in volume will be more than made up for by the difference. Since .99 has a 35% commission, you need to sell 6 copies at 99 cents to equal one sale at $2.99.

You can't actually price something as free on Amazon. The free books on Amazon are either temporary promotions through their Select program or they are price matched to other stores, which can take months and doesn't allow you to raise your price back up at will. In either case, they are loss leaders by people with larger catalogs to generate sales of their other books.
 

CDancourt

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I agree with Maggie and Sarah. Your time and your efforts are worth of something. If you want to start for free, why not, but don't do it because others told you to. It's your book, and for you to decide. No one else.

Plus, if the novel is interesting, $2.99 or even $4.99 is not much.

Good luck and keep us posted!
 

lady_K

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If you have a second book to follow, then it'd be more beneficial to make the first book free. Then people are more likely to buy the second one.
But if this is stand-alone novel, you should charge for it.
2.99 has been the sweet spot in my experience. People tend to respect that particular price.
Hope that helps!
 

Austin Wimberly

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Plus, if the novel is interesting, $2.99 or even $4.99 is not much.

When my book launches, I plan on selling it at the $4.99 price point and experimenting from there.

I have to admit that there is a part of me that wants to sell the book for...ONE MILLION DOLLARS (strikes Dr. Evil pose). Think about it. If I sell even ten copies, I'd be set for a while. Why ten copies, that would be...let's see...carry the one...ten million dollars!

Wonder why everybody doesn't set their prices that high. They must be afraid of wealth or something.
 

WeaselFire

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What is your time worth?
And what is the book worth? :)

I have no real advice for pricing, everyone needs to decide on their own strategy. But I would advise anyone to price their book according to their own sales plan. And yes, you should have one.

Jeff
 

GiantRampagingPencil

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When my book launches, I plan on selling it at the $4.99 price point and experimenting from there.

I have to admit that there is a part of me that wants to sell the book for...ONE MILLION DOLLARS (strikes Dr. Evil pose). Think about it. If I sell even ten copies, I'd be set for a while. Why ten copies, that would be...let's see...carry the one...ten million dollars!

Wonder why everybody doesn't set their prices that high. They must be afraid of wealth or something.

Sorry, good idea and all, but you'll only see the royalty percentage. However, I am convinced that is the only flaw in your plan.
 

Kriven

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I price based on my wordcount. For every ten thousand words, I add a new dollar value.

Under ten thousand = .99
Ten Thousand = 1.99
Twenty Thousand = 2.99
So on and so forth.

I figure that's a fair exchange of money for material and production time.
 

McMich

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I'm willing to pay 2.99 for a new author on amazon. If I like previous books I am willing to pay more. I understand people are trying to equate time to price of book, but there is more that goes into it. If there was a way to know if a self-pub has an editor (some people do list the editors) I might be willing to pay more as I expect the quality to be better.
 

pennywise18

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I only meant giving it free as a promotional tool, as I've seen some people comment about how that worked for them. But in the end I settled for $2.99, which seems quite reasonable. In time I may experiment and raise it/lower it, but for now I want to see how it does.

Just published it on amazon, the waiting is kinda driving me mad till it's officially up for sale.
 
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