77p on Amazon Kindle |
£1.99 on Amazon Kindle |
I told several friends about the wonders of box sets and they also had remarkable sales.
However, when I adjusted the price of my books to take into account that some are novellas and others full-length books, I was forced to put up the price of my box sets as well. Not unexpectedly books that were now £1.99 instead of 99 p and box sets that were now £2.99 instead of £1.99, no longer sold in their hundreds. I put the price down to the novellas to 77 p and sell hundreds of these every week.
Although I have double the amount of books available for sale on the Kindle I'm selling fewer copies of my longer books than I did this time last year but my royalties remain about the same. I'm about to release a four book box set – all the titles are novellas. This will be at £1.99 and I'm waiting to see if this is in fact the magic price.
I wonder how many readers only look at books under a certain price – I tend to go for bargains when Amazon sends me a list. The other day I bought a recent Michael Connelly for £1.32 and three Lee Child novellas for less than a pound each. I rarely pay over £3.50 for any e-book– even one by Christian Cameron.
Are you prepared to pay more than £4.00 for an e-book if it's by an author you want to read? What about books by indie authors? Do you always expect them to be less than two pounds?
I wanted to buy Julie Cohen's 'Dear Thing' - but to my surprise the paperback was cheaper than the e-book so I got that instead.
I know that other writers change the prices of their books on a regular basis – sometimes putting them as high as £4.99 – I would be interested to know if their royalties remain the same despite the change in prices.
I'm still not sure whether putting the longer books up was a good idea, but I'm going to stick with it as I don't think a 30,000 word novella should be the same price as a full-length book.
Mass-market paperbacks are on their way out – so the pundits say. I certainly buy more books for my Kindle than I would ever have considered when there were only paperbacks. Imagine buying over 100 paperbacks a year? I doubt many people do that, but I'm sure thousands of people by over 100 e-books.
£1.99 - out May 23rd. |
That is a very interesting post. It's the same equation Supermarket use. Price them low: sell them high.
ReplyDeleteSeems to work, Jean, -but it balances our royality wise as at the higher price one gets 70% instead of 35%.
ReplyDeleteMaureen told me someone who write ssimilar thing to her ahs her e-book at 20p!!
I grapple with this myself, Fenella. When I first put my back list on Amazon for Kindle I had no idea what I was doing and priced them too high (can't remember how much, now!), and after a short while slashed them all to 77p 'as an experiment'. The experiment worked so well, I sold so many, I kept the price at 77p. These are all full length novels, all but 3 of them previously published. As another experiment (!) I've now priced my new book YESTERDAY at £1.99 to see if the sales will suffer - too early yet to say - and if so, whether my royalties will even out, as you suggest. Sometimes I think 77p is selling too cheap - but if I earn more that way ...? Personally if I want an ebook badly enough I'll pay up to about £4 for it (or wait for the price to come down to that level).
ReplyDeleteA very thought provoking post, Fenella. I really don't believe there is any norm in this. As an experiment earlier this year I reduced all my books to 99p, but there was no notable difference in my sales. When I reinstated the original prices, my sales substantially increased. Sod's law, I think, but I'm not complaining.
ReplyDeleteMost of my books hover around the £2 mark, which I think is a fair price that most people are prepared to pay. I certainly think £4.99 would be too much for an eBook, even if it was a best-seller.
Thanks for your input, Sheila, Rena, intersting how things work. This week my sales are down - selling less than in April no idea why this is. Perhaps Easter boosted sales last month?.
ReplyDeleteI doubt if most people distinguish much between 77p and 99p, but that 22p per book would make a lot of difference to the author over time.
ReplyDeleteHelena, I sell far more at 77p than at 99p - silly really -but readers do seem to pick thr cheaper titles.
ReplyDelete