Authors - A Word about Pricing Your Books

Authors, specifically self-published authors, I'd like to have a word about pricing your books. I'd also like to discuss why many online sites will raise the price of books, at times more than double of the price an author sets.

So, once you've written your best seller ... well, a book at least, you need to think about marketing and the price of your book will be part of this strategy.

After many years of self-publishing my own books, where I made mistakes during the first couples of years, I have settled on pricing my books from 99c to $32.99. I have found this to be the sweet spot for my fiction books.

You may need to play around with your pricing and when it comes to eBooks, prices like 99c, $1.99 or $2.99 seem to work well for self-published books. I set my novellas at around $12.99 to $15.99 and I have an audio version of Fame & Other Disasters set at $19.99.

This is the audiobook version of Fame & Other Disasters. I price it at $19.99

Pricing becomes an issue for books sold on online sites and it is not the fault of authors. Many online sites will sell books for almost double of the price an author sets for their book. As a business, there are costs involved in selling books, especially the printing of Print on Demand (POD) books and audiobooks. POD means short or single print runs, which is more expensive per book than larger print runs. Amazon (and sites like it) does add a few dollars to self-published books to allow for this. Audiobooks are expensive to produce, I know how much because I produced one. Narration, audio producer and premises hire all add up. I'm not looking at achieving a return on my investment any time soon.

I found a copy of another of my books - The Robot's Heart: Toria's Story selling for $37.99 on a popular book site, I sell it for $15.99. This book is a novella, so around 120 pages. It's a quick read and probably should not be sold for double the price I have set it at.

This happens time and time again and even though I have complained to these sites, there is either no response or they say "this is our policy". What they are doing is ripping off the reading public. Any reader will know they can buy books at large supermarket stores like Big W, K-Mart and Target for less than $20, so why would anyone want to pay more?

This is my latest novella that is selling on many online book sites for a lot more than the $15.99 I sell it for. Close to $40 on some online sites.

It upsets me when these companies deliberately raise prices of books for their own gain, are their operating costs so high they need to double the price of a book? Authors do not receive any more royalties from these sites either and most readers won't buy books that are priced too high. As an author, I don't want readers to pay more.

Take note that the prices I am quoting are for self-published books. Traditionally published books will sell for more, with the average price for a print book being $34.99. Many eBooks from trad publishers are now selling at $14.99 or more.

There is also the option to borrow books from libraries, both your local one or virtually. When someone reads a book from the library, authors receive decent royalties, so readers, please use your library because they are great supporters of authors.

As an author, you are running a small business, which means the price you set for your book is an important part of your business. Do your research when pricing your book and set a price that will help you make a profit, but also be attractive to readers who will buy your book.

If you have any other strategies about book pricing, please let me know. Wishing you all the best in selling your books and hoping the online sites see reason and set their book prices closer to what authors set them.

Happy reading,

Maria P Frino