As a self-publisher especially if you have just started, you might wonder why some readers don't care about price. Let me tell you the things that they consider when buying a book.
Today's article has three points and you're going to want to stick around for the third point. Because it is a secret as to exactly the one thing that most authors do. This huge mistake when it comes to pricing their books.
So let's get into it. Today's topic is why some readers don't care about price. Now when you're first releasing your book, one of the things you're going to have to fill out on Amazon or wherever you're reproducing it or releasing your book is that you're going to have to fill out the price.
But what price should you be using for your books? This is where Imposter Syndrome starts to kick in. You think "well the book isn't that good and I'm not that great of an author". And all of these ideas start swirling around in your head.
You see other books that are high priced and you're thinking "well if this author who's famous is selling at that rate, I guess I should sell it lower". Another thing you might be thinking is "well what if I put it at a really low price?".
"Won't that mean that people will buy more copies of my book?". In that sense, you end up winning but then you make no money off of each sale of your book. These are the sorts of questions that start to go around and bring a lot of chaos and confusion into your lives as authors.
Check out this related article: 3 BEST PIECES OF WRITING ADVICE
And we want to keep it easy here so this is what we're going to answer in today's article. Grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist. When I first got started self-publishing, I was completely under pricing my books particularly the paperback books.
But then I took some courses and watched an awful lot of videos, listened to podcasts, and read books. By going through all of these things, I began to realize there is a pricing strategy. I'm going to tell you the secret right here even though we're not even on the secrets yet, this one here is still one of the big ones.
The first thing is your pricing on your Kindle books should be for a single manuscript $2.99. I would not suggest going any higher than that because its goal is to bring in all other readers to see the paperbacks. Paperback books generally make twice as much as your Kindle and your eBooks are going to be making.
But you need to get the pricing right so we lure them in with the Kindle pricing. But then we're going to hit them with a lot higher prices when it comes to the paperback pricing. People often maybe care a little bit about pricing but it doesn't even fit.
It's like 8th, 9th, 10th place in most people's value and hierarchy of pricing so they are not caring that much about it. It plays a little bit of a game we always end in nine. And the reason we do $2.99 to $9.99 in our books is specifically that that's where Amazon will give us a 70% royalty on those books.
As compared to the paperbacks which give us 40% to 50% but we can make a lot higher royalties on them. And the magic price for paperbacks is that you should be getting royalties of $5 per sale of the paperback. But with these, we raise the prices.
So every time we're getting about six sales, we're just going to bump the price up a dollar. So that we can ensure that the market itself is telling us in a given 90 day period. If we see that over 90 days we're not making any sales at all paperback sales, we'll drop it back down to that base price.
For many books, it's around $13.99 for the base price. We let the other regions automatically figure out what they need to be and what happens. I've discovered sometimes each one I'd call it like a level one pricing at $5 for some of my books.
We're talking books that are only a hundred pages. They have reached pricing levels of $16 that is meaning I'm making around $21 per book that is selling. I was blown away, I don't start the price at $35 for a book that's 100 pages.
The market tells me that it has value for that book. And we slowly raise the price if I go 90 days with no sales down, it goes back to $13 where I'm making $5 apiece. But in this case, it would be 3 manuscripts and those manuscripts each bring in $3.
It would be $5 for the base and then you would add a dollar. So for two manuscripts, I'd make $6 or three manuscripts $7 as my base price. And then every time you sell 6 copies, we just raise the price a dollar.
Get Some Positive Reviews
I hope that made sense to you a little bit and the reason it's so amazing to me was that the price determines the value of the book. The more copies that sell, the more you make. In addition, as long as the reviews are positive on your books, that is the quality of the books is good enough to get us four and five-star reviews.
Even something like 50 Shades Of Gray with its three-star rating continues to make millions of copies. So don't let the reviews completely get you down, the reviews are very important but they need to give positive reviews.
That's the reason you want things like your advanced review team and other strategies we've discussed previously. The next point is that I raised the price and just saw sales keep increasing. Because what people want they are willing to pay for it.
If you have a value proposition where you're giving people a lot of value, they're going to simply keep on buying from you. So why some readers don't care about price? The first thing is many readers have just tons of money, it's just not an issue.
So price isn't a barrier in the first place. The biggest risk is time and whether the book is going to be a fiction book entertaining or a non-fiction book solving their problem. Whether it's how to do Puppy Training like I always like to hit upon.
Or some other issue that you're helping them with, maybe Cooking Paleo Diets for their dogs. I don't know what it is that's popular these days, well actually I do but those topics that are maybe perhaps popular for your readers. And then what we do is we're putting the book out there and they don't care about the price.
The second thing is you're meeting a need and they want the need met no matter what. If they've got some pain in their elbow and you've got a book on relieving pain from elbows and you happen to be an expert on that. Or can find information to make you upwards within the expertise on that and you're able to help them with that, what would it be worth?
Is it worth $20? Is it worth $30 if I could fix the pain in your elbow? That's the reason why it's important though that the book meets the requirements of what you're claiming that it does.
So that we get positive reviews from those people who read the book, it gets in and gets out and solves it also. You might be thinking "well the book needs to be like a thousand pages if you're going to charge so much money for the book". That is a mistake.
Again it comes back to, is it solving the problem or not? Here in Self-Publishing Made Easy, one of the things you'll find with my courses and Coaching is that we're not about discussing thousands of ways of doing something.
We're going to solve the problem, you have a manuscript you want to get published and we work through the steps to get it published quickly easily onto the markets and start selling. So that's the key issue that I focus on which is the value proposition.
Then the question is how much is that worth? You decide the value, the market decides how much that's worth. If you want to go with something that's thousands and thousands of dollars and very complicated and gives you 500 ways of doing each thing, well, there's plenty of other courses on the market and many fake gurus.
They will tell you methods that simply don't work or are outdated. But for me, I like to keep it easy. If you like to keep it easy, well that's probably why you're reading this article. If you're looking for a complex, this is the wrong place for you and you probably should check something else.
But maybe for your books that you're coming out with, they're meeting a need, and even if they're not even all that well-written, if they're meeting the need then people are going to be willing to pay. For example one of the classic examples was a hair club for men that was popular in the 80s and '90s. I remember the commercials on TV may even still be around today.
They charge 3 times as much for the same services. And one of the founders of that very company commented that when he first started he discovered that people who were working jobs that paid almost nothing were willing to pay huge amounts of thousands of dollars for the service. Because they wanted to have a need met and they're willing to do it if you can meet their need.
Find Out That Magic Spot
The second answer is they know, like, and trust you. They know they must have what you have. So the thing about this one is this was along the lines I was discussing with somebody recently on pen names.
When they're doing their books and they're coming out with a given book, they have been trying to do a pen name versus using their actual name. If you use your actual name and you're on video that's why I teach Content Marketing Courses to students as well.
Of course, they will know, like, and trust you. As a result, you're going to get sales because of that. Not just a few but quite a few. It will drastically increase what you're doing because you're a human being putting out useful books on the market.
They connect with you as a person and as a result when they read your book, it's not neutral. It's even better just like if you're going to a restaurant and you know the chef who's made the food for you. It increases the pleasure that you get from the food you're eating as opposed to just another anonymous chef.
That's one reason I like it at some fancy restaurants. I've been around the world where the chef will come out and meet you. They talk a little bit about the food they're preparing and the effort they went into it.
I remember one time even in Iceland where the chef came out and they don't even give you a choice on what you were going to eat. It was a seven-course meal and they said here's what you're going to eat. And they explain with a map where each of the ingredients came from and how they were going to be cooking them.
It was amazing food and I guarantee you it has a lot to do with connecting with the creator. Even the article you're reading right now, some people will hate this article and find me repulsive when they read this. Because it's just I'm making things too easy, whereas other people will connect with it.
And the thing is that if you don't like it, then you avoid it. But if you do like what you're taking and you connect and resonate at some level, well then you know it's a good match. That's where you should learn.
The same goes for your books. If you can get out front and you can connect with people, you can charge a higher price, a premium for that because of this "know, like, and trust factor". But let's get to the third answer of the day and our secret answer of the day.
It is that for too many authors, they're selling their books for so little and they don't realize they're making fewer sales. They could be making a lot more sales with a lot higher profit. So we want to find that magic spot where people are still buying enough of your books.
In my world, it's in 90 days for every six copies we sell. We raise the price a dollar until we're selling nothing. And then we can lower it down back to the base price as I mentioned earlier.
Let the market tell you what the price is worth. You can also experiment with prices and see what works best. But if you're making no money on your books, well the fact is you're not going to have money to reinvest to produce better books next time and to keep your motivation up.
For me, when I get up in the morning, I look at the curves. I see "my goodness, look at these sales that are coming in on my books! it motivates me". I don't know how you are but that's very motivational.
By charging a high price, it's a win for the reader because you're going to produce better and higher-quality books. You'll have more books and more money for editing better covers and better descriptions. More selling ads and things like that.
The very things you're going to need. You can funnel that money back in to produce even better books for those customers in the future. So you're going to want to charge as high of a price as possible that is still resulting in sales for your book.
When you're running your ads and other things like that different marketing that you're doing. But do not underestimate the power of content marketing and that's one of the reasons I sell my Content Marketing Course to help you out through the steps.
Knowing what it takes to get yourself into a position where people begin to know, like, and trust you. So why some readers don't care about price? Are you charging too little for your book? If you are, write "Yes" below in the comments.
And if you're not, then write "No" below in your comments. Because I want to hear from you to know exactly what you're doing and what's working or not working for you. And check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.