When selling something, you need to of course do the pricing. Find out what is the best pricing for eBooks as well as the right strategies when it comes to self-publishing your books.
Today's question has three points that we're going to hit. And you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to why your eBook pricing matters so much.
Now let's get into it. The question today is, what is the best pricing for eBooks? This is a very common question for authors who are first getting started.
You've created your book and like I advise people to get your book onto the KDP platform. So the Kindle version of your book is out. But what price should you sell your eBook at?
This is all too common that people make a huge mistake usually by charging too high of a price or too low of a price. You're continually self-doubting, you're thinking maybe the pricing is off completely. You want to make sure that you're not making a mistake when it comes to pricing because it does matter so much.
And that is what we're going to hit in today's article. But before we get into the answers, grab a copy of my completely free Self-Publishing Checklist. It will help you make sure that you are not skipping any of the steps to get your book selling right away.
Well, a little bit from my own story. When I first got started selling books, I had no idea about pricing and how pricing strategy in its own right is a huge science. There are all sorts of psychology.
I thought the pricing was just what you pick a price based on the value of the thing you have and then people will pay that price. I was completely mistaken on how this game goes because the fact is the pricing itself impacts what people feel the value of your thing is.
Have you ever walked into a store and you see they have different things on different shelves? And it's 3 different prices, you think "wow that's too low or that's too high". Maybe in the middle would be the right one for you.
Little do you know, they're playing psychological games with your head at that moment. Because the pricing makes us feel there's more value because otherwise, why would you charge more? And if something is really cheap, well why would it be so cheap if it's actually worth so much?
Pricing Is Very Important
So pricing plays a big role and that was something that I began to understand as I began reading books on sales and marketing. The next thing I understood was that Amazon forces the pricing on your books to $2.99 to $9.99 as a result if you wish to get a 70% rate which you should be going for.
They're doing it because they see on their end they get more sales when the pricing is right inside of this "goldilocks zone" for your books. Now if you want to go really high on your prices, you will stop making as much money.
We can be making 30% if it's too low or too high. But if you're in this zone, you will get 70% which is a fantastic amount of money coming from every sale. By doing so, Amazon can actually tell people this is the price we want you to sell your book at.
I fumbled on pricing going way too low so I didn't see enough sales. I dropped the price and little did I know I was signaling that my book isn't worth much and any sales I did get would cut my ability to run ads against it. Since I would have less money coming in.
The price that we sell something at will directly impact how much money we have to reinvest. To both produce more of those products and services. Also to make sure that we have money to pay for ads, to find new readers for our books.
Check out this related article: Self Publishing Your Own Book?
This is something also that must be considered when choosing the correct pricing strategy. Now the thing is I learned that pricing is extremely important. The goal is to max earnings and not necessarily the max number of sales of the book unless we're getting emails from the book like a lead generation.
That is where we're getting people to subscribe for something free to get the email address where we can continue marketing to them. In reality, when we say marketing to them, we're just giving them more of what they already want. We want to establish a relationship with our readers.
So that they will leave reviews for us and that they will also purchase our books and tell other people about the quality that they're getting. Then the problems that your books are solving or entertainment they're getting from the books one way or the other.
But this is very powerful and that would be one reason we might go for a lower price to increase the total number of sales. But generally, we're looking to see the price at which we're going to maximize our earnings per book. So what is the best pricing for eBooks?
Driving Traffic To Paperbacks
This one is pretty straightforward, your starting price should be $2.99, and translate that into euros or whatever it is but $2.99. Then for each additional title that we have, we're going to have an additional $1. So if you have a bundle of two books together, that would go for $3.99.
A bundle of three books would be $4.99, does that make sense? So we slowly raised the price based upon the number of bundles. However, we generally leave the price there for our eBooks.
You can try testing and some people have found great success at raising the prices. So if you see a lot of sales coming through at the lower prices, you might raise the prices and see what impact that has on sales. For some people, they see that their earnings start to go up so playing around a little bit can be helpful.
I personally do not do that, I just leave the prices at the base price. And that brings us to our secret answer of the day which explains why I do this. Our secret answer of the day is the main reason for your eBooks is to drive traffic to your paperbacks.
Check out this related article: Where To Self Publish eBooks?
For most people that I know, paperbacks earn twice as much money as eBooks. As a result, we are using eBooks to initially pull people in. It shows a slash-through and the markdown to show that the eBooks are 80% off.
Our paperback books are making us $5 apiece plus $1 for each additional copy. So $5 in royalties and you figure out the math, whatever that is. Maybe your book is $11.99 or $12.99 and then we're making a $5 profit on each one.
Our eBooks then are slashed down at whatever it might be. 50% or 80% off or something along those lines. And that just pulls people in saying, "wow there's a markdown".
But then they see the paperback and it starts to get the end going. So the eBook initially attracts the men but then they think "I really want to read this book". You have a really good sales copy on your description, the cover is fantastic and they're thinking, "I really love to have that in my hands".
So they buy the paperback, the eBook is leading and pushing that traffic to the paperback where we double the amount of money that we're making on the books that we're selling. This is the reason why you're pricing on your ebooks. But at the same time, we want to make sure we never move outside that 70% range.
So no matter how many books you have in your bundle, we never will go below $9.99 for the book. Because we want to ensure we get that 70%. And so that's a little bit about the pricing.
But I'd like to know from you now so you can help me out by telling me what price do you sell your eBooks at. Have you found out what is the best pricing for eBooks? Let me know below in the comments and check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.