Price?

childeroland

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What's an ideal price for a first novel -- fantasy, e-book -- 252 pages long?

Thanks
 

rwm4768

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You should probably start out at either $2.99 or $3.99. When you release more of the series, you can drop the first book to $0.99.
 

childeroland

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You should probably start out at either $2.99 or $3.99. When you release more of the series, you can drop the first book to $0.99.
OK. Thank you.
 

cool pop

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You can also try permafree down the line once you have the series completed or at least three books in the series released. This is a popular strategy if you are selling your books wide and not in Select. It can funnel sales to the rest of your series books. It also opens the door to more promotional options. I am currently using permafree for two wide series that are complete and plan to try it for another series that I am currently writing. I've got three books in it so far and it will be a six book series. Right now, I am doing the 99 cent thing for the current series but plan to have the first free (if Amazon doesn't give me issues price matching) when I release book four.

Permafree does better in my opinion because I find not only does it get readers to try the rest of your series (if they like the first book) but it also funnels them to unrelated titles in your back list. Either way, dropping the price of book one or doing permafree are both popular strategies for authors of any genre if they sell on all retailers. You just have to test to see which works better for a series, etc.
 
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ironmikezero

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Should you ever decide to self-pub a printed version, the general consensus (think loose guideline) seems to be that an e-book is reasonably priced at roughly one third the list price of the printed version. POD services will typically have pricing recommendations pertinent to the manuscript under consideration.
 
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Gordon

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I very recently released my book (320 pages) through a publisher as both a POD and an ebook; the cost of the POD was determined by page length, and the required minimum ($17.95) is a bit high, I think, for an unknown author - I certainly wasn't going to price it higher! Since my main priority is to have people read the book, not lose readers over a buck or two, I listed the ebook at its minimum ($2.99), which is about 1/6 the paperback cost, nevermind postage fees.
 
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rwm4768

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I very recently released my book (320 pages) through a publisher as both a POD and an ebook; the cost of the POD was determined by page length, and the required minimum ($17.95) is a bit high, I think, for an unknown author - I certainly wasn't going to price it higher! Since my main priority is to have people read the book, not lose readers over a buck or two, I listed the ebook at its minimum ($2.99), which is about 1/6 the paperback cost, nevermind postage fees.

$17.95 is super high for a 320-page book. I did mine through Createspace. It's 465 pages, and I'm able to make over $1.00 per paperback sale priced at $12.99.
 
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Gordon

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It is high, I agree - I wanted to sell it around the $12 mark, too. That said, through my publisher's site, I'm making a bit over $6 a book, a bit less if sold through other online bookstores, but more than $1. Createspace only sells on Amazon, right? That limits where else it's available.

Of course, right now, Amazon - while posting my paperback and selling the Kindle version - is currently claiming the paperback is "temporarily out of stock", which is patently false (it's POD and fully available from the distributor to anywhere). I guess this is meant to hurt competitor publishers, but it really only hurts me and I'm not sure how it helps them, as interested buyers go elsewhere.
 

Polenth

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It is high, I agree - I wanted to sell it around the $12 mark, too. That said, through my publisher's site, I'm making a bit over $6 a book, a bit less if sold through other online bookstores, but more than $1. Createspace only sells on Amazon, right? That limits where else it's available.

CreateSpace has an option for expanded distribution, which means it's available in other places. It's the KDP printing system that currently doesn't have expanded distribution, though will probably get it later on.
 

Al X.

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My first two are priced at $2.99 and there are no print versions. The remaining are $3.99 for the ebook and $9.99 for print (250-270 pages) which is about as high as I think I can reasonably expect to sell them for. I don't sell a lot of print versions but they do sell. Although, these days, hardly anything sells.
 
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AuthorSamantha

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I released my book 2 days ago at 2.99 and got a few sales but nothing crazy. The sequel is coming out Tuesday, and it's making me think about dropping the first one to 99 cents. Maybe more people will be inclined to try the series and then pay full price for the follow up.
 

Dave.C.Robinson

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I've currently got four fairly short pulp adventures out, each one sitting at roughly 200-220 pages. I'm selling the first at 99 cents for the eBook with the sequels at $2.99 each. All four are in paperback for $9.99. None of my reviews have complained about pricing.

I did go KDP for print purely because it was easier for me. (Createspace wanted me to calculate spine width and that was a deal breaker.)
 

Polenth

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I released my book 2 days ago at 2.99 and got a few sales but nothing crazy. The sequel is coming out Tuesday, and it's making me think about dropping the first one to 99 cents. Maybe more people will be inclined to try the series and then pay full price for the follow up.

It might happen and it might not. I've not seen more sales at lower prices, which suggests that if people want it, they don't see a whole lot of difference between $0.99 and $2.99. If the price drop is part of a big promotion campaign, that might make a difference. But as a regular price, what you might see is that you make the same number of sales, but get paid less.
 

Al X.

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I priced my first two at $2.99 (minimum for KDP 70% royalty) and the remainder at $3.99. All of the $3.99 ebooks are available in print for $9.99. I don't sell a lot of print books but they do sell.
 

Sydneyd

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I'd suggest you take a look at the books in your genre on the top twenty lists and see what they are selling for. In my genre, .99 releases for the first weekend used to be the norm, now, thank goodness, it's switching to full price releases, $2.99-$4.99. When I finish a series, I put the first at .99 (I'd love to put it permafree but I can't get Amazon to switch it for me). It's up to you. I miss the ranks I used to hit with a .99 release, but I like the money more.
 

AuthorSamantha

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It might happen and it might not. I've not seen more sales at lower prices, which suggests that if people want it, they don't see a whole lot of difference between $0.99 and $2.99. If the price drop is part of a big promotion campaign, that might make a difference. But as a regular price, what you might see is that you make the same number of sales, but get paid less.

Yeah, it's tricky. Because I lowered my book to 99 cents, it allowed me to advertise on discounted websites, which have given me over 70 sales and around 1,000 pages read every day. I can't be sure these people would have been able to see my book had it not been for the marketing I paid for. But like you said, who's to say they wouldn't pay full price with no issue?

I think I'm switching it back to 2.99 tomorrow to test it out for a bit.