Success Story: Raising Prices Made an Author More Money

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Jim told me no one would pay more for his books if he raised the price. I told him he was wrong, and he ended up with about five times the royalties. This is the story, the pricing rule I used, and the KDP math behind it. For more books that started this way, see the 32 best self-published books of all time.

Why were Jim’s sales flat?

Jim from North Carolina has been writing a series of non-fiction survival books for years and putting them on Amazon. He wanted more sales. New books would give a small bump, then sales would flatline, and he couldn’t see a way forward except writing many more books. In his niche, others were making a lot more than he was. He started to lose motivation and to doubt that the market was big enough or that people liked survival books.

He tried a new cover first. Your title and subtitle matter most, and the cover is second. He still sold about one to two copies a day of his main book. Then he rewrote the description, mixing up the paragraphs, and still sold one to two a day.

He found one of my blog posts through Google, got tired of guessing, and booked a free discovery call with me. We looked at his exact case. He was making one of the 3 ways self-publishers sabotage their success without knowing it.

What was wrong with his prices?

They were too low. He made only $1 to $2 on a paperback sale. I told him to make at least $5 on each paperback sale. That’s the starting price. He reacted: nobody will pay that for a book. He assumed that since he wasn’t selling thousands of copies, people weren’t interested in paying.

On KDP the royalty is (royalty rate x list price) minus printing cost. KDP’s example is a $15 black-ink paperback of 333 pages on Amazon.com: 0.60 x $15 minus $5.00 is $4.00. The rate is 60% for list prices of $9.99 or more on Amazon.com and 50% below that (KDP paperback royalty). Use KDP’s calculator for your page count, or try my KDP royalty and print cost calculator with your own price.

The strategy, step by step:

1. Set the price so that you earn at least $5 a sale on a paperback or hardcover (bundles work differently).
2. Every time you make six sales in 30 days, raise the price by $1.
3. If you go 30 days with no sales, go back to the base price and start over.
4. Never go under $5 in royalties.

For the Kindle book, he thought $5.99, half the paperback price. I told him $2.99. The Kindle book is there to drive traffic, with ads, to the higher-priced paperback. $2.99 sits at the bottom of the 70% royalty band, which on Amazon.com now runs to $12.99 (KDP pricing). I also looked at one of my own top sellers: I have raised its price 28 times, so each sale now earns about $28 more than the $5 it started at. That is my result on that book, and yours will differ.

He thought there was no way this would work, but he agreed to try.

What happened when he raised the price?

Sales of his survival books did not change. He just made much more money on each paperback sale. Dropping the Kindle price also lifted his Kindle sales, so the total coming in went up a lot. At one to two sales a day, he hit the sixth sale every three to five days, so the price went up another dollar several times over several weeks. After a few more weeks he stopped hitting the sixth sale, and the price settled. He was making about five times the royalties he started with. The product was identical.

In my experience, price tells people about quality, and people use it as a signal. If I gave you a book free, you would be less likely to read it than a book you paid for. The market tells you the value if you listen.

Results vary with your genre and your readers, so test prices on your own books, one step at a time. Small tests like this are a big part of how to find success in self-publishing. Some readers do not care about the price at all, as I explain in why some readers don’t care about price.

If your paperbacks are priced very low, book a free 25-minute discovery call with me and we will go through your numbers together.

Can I change my price after I publish?

Yes. KDP’s help page on pricing says that for a published paperback you choose “Edit print book pricing” and change it in the Pricing & Royalty section, and for an ebook you choose “Edit eBook Pricing”. You then publish again. It also says that if you only change the list price, your book’s content will not go into review. For print, you are still paid royalties based on the list price you set (KDP help: Price Your Book). So a price test costs you nothing but a few minutes. Change one price, write down the date, and watch your own sales for a few weeks before you decide.

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