Latest / If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion / How to Price Your Book

Transcript

How to Price Your Book · If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion

• 0:10
  Joel: This is If I'm being honest, straight talk about book publishing and promotion.
• 0:14
  Joel: I'm your host, Joel Pitney.
• 0:17
  Sayde: And I'm Sayde Walker.
• 0:18
  Joel: And today we are going to be talking about a very, very, very simple but also important topic in the world of book publishing, which is how do you price your book?
• 0:29
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 0:30
  Sayde: How do you price your book, Joel?
• 0:32
  Joel: I mean, this is one of the most common everybody has to deal with this question, right?
• 0:36
  Joel: And when you're when you're deciding, when you're about to hit publish on that book, you're you're hanging out in the back end of Ingram Spark or Amazon KDP, and they ask, well, what do you want the price for the hardcover to be?
• 0:47
  Joel: For the paperback, for the ebook, what do you want the prices to be, right?
• 0:50
  Joel: And um you've got to come up with that question.
• 0:53
  Joel: And it can seem really overwhelming and really daunting.
• 0:56
  Sayde: I agree with that.
• 0:57
  Sayde: And I think that this is one of the traps that's easy to fall into when you're indie publishing this kind of false narrative that if you make all the right decisions when setting up your metadata, uh, that your book is gonna sell or that it's gonna sell better, or you know, Amazon's gonna unlock some really cool algorithm where it's gonna promote your book to people without you having to put any work or or add any money to the equation, right?
• 1:24
  Sayde: And so pricing can be one of those traps where you can go, okay, should I price my book$11.99 or$12.99?
• 1:33
  Sayde: What is the correct answer?
• 1:35
  Sayde: And with a lot of this, there's not actually one correct answer.
• 1:40
  Joel: Yep.
• 1:41
  Joel: So we have a very simple philosophy of pricing a book.
• 1:45
  Joel: And we're gonna get into some of the tactics, but we're gonna start at the high level.
• 1:48
  Joel: And it's very simple.
• 1:50
  Joel: And that is price is not a primary driver of a book purchase.
• 1:58
  Sayde: In fact, it could be one of the last drivers of whether or not someone is gonna buy your book.
• 2:05
  Joel: We're not talking about going to the grocery shore store to buy bread or milk or orange juice.
• 2:11
  Joel: So you you we are talking about a motivated buyer.
• 2:15
  Joel: When they show up on your Amazon page or bookshop.org page to look at your book and they see the price, they're already gonna be very interested in purchasing that book.
• 2:27
  Joel: They're not gonna be going looking for deals.
• 2:29
  Sayde: Right.
• 2:30
  Joel: And so by the time they show up on that page, price is gonna be one of the final criteria about whether or not they're gonna purchase this book.
• 2:40
  Joel: They're already gonna want it.
• 2:42
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 2:42
  Sayde: And that's true also with you know, whether you're browsing books at a bookstore.
• 2:46
  Sayde: It's not just looking at books on Amazon or looking at books on bookshop.org.
• 2:52
  Sayde: When you are, when you are purchasing the next book to read, that's an investment in your time.
• 2:58
  Sayde: It's an investment in entertainment, in potentially, you know, gaining some knowledge and and some growth if it's a nonfiction book.
• 3:06
  Sayde: And so when you think about, if you put yourself in the mindset of the buyer, not the seller, not the author, but the buyer, how do you buy books?
• 3:15
  Sayde: You were looking at the covers, right?
• 3:17
  Sayde: You're reading the description on the back of the book, or if you're shopping online, you're reading the description on Amazon.
• 3:24
  Sayde: You are reading the customer reviews and seeing what other people had to say about this book, hopefully with no spoilers.
• 3:32
  Sayde: And and then you are going, okay, what's what's what is my investment in what's the cost of this book and is it is it worth it?
• 3:40
  Sayde: And so price is arguably the last thing that someone considers when purchasing a book.
• 3:48
  Joel: So uh if that's the case, that price is not the main reason someone's gonna buy the book.
• 3:54
  Joel: Our philosophy is you should be pricing your book in a way that it will not make the buyer think twice.
• 4:03
  Joel: So you don't want it to be so high that they say, whoa, that seems too high.
• 4:08
  Joel: I was interested in that book, but it's too much.
• 4:11
  Joel: Right?
• 4:12
  Joel: So let's say it was a hardcover book and you decided to charge$45 for it, even though it's only a it's just a basic hardcover six by nine, that might make a buyer think twice and run away.
• 4:25
  Joel: But if you were to price it around where most publishers price their hardcover books, which is 30 bucks, they're probably not gonna think twice.
• 4:34
  Sayde: Yep.
• 4:34
  Joel: And they're gonna purchase it if they want the book.
• 4:37
  Joel: So what we always say when it comes to pricing is you want to figure out what the acceptable range of pricing is for a book of your genre and your format and your length, and then charge as much as you can within that acceptable range.
• 4:53
  Joel: Why leave money on the table?
• 4:55
  Joel: Uh we I've seen people make this mistake.
• 4:57
  Joel: They'll think, oh, I want, I don't, you know, I'm not in this for the money.
• 5:01
  Joel: I just want people to buy the book.
• 5:02
  Joel: And so uh they'll have their paperback listed for$9, which means that they're not making much money at all, even though every other book like theirs is selling for$15.
• 5:13
  Sayde: Right.
• 5:14
  Joel: And one of the that what ends up happening is that all the people who wanted their book anyway and would have paid$15 for it are now getting a nice discount.
• 5:22
  Joel: And then you, as the author, are making out.
• 5:25
  Sayde: And arguably also what's happening is kind of a psychological thing with the buyer where they see this$9 paperback and uh that makes it look self-published.
• 5:35
  Sayde: That makes it look like it might be a lower quality product.
• 5:39
  Sayde: And even though, like we talked about, it's not like buying bananas and people aren't, you know, comparing books, is you know, sometimes there is a comparison that happens.
• 5:48
  Sayde: Sometimes you're going, okay, I want to know what were the best thriller novels of 2026 or whatever.
• 5:53
  Sayde: And maybe you're kind of browsing, you're doing some bookstore browsing.
• 5:56
  Sayde: When you come across that book that's$9 when all the rest are$14, that can feel like that's too good of a deal.
• 6:04
  Sayde: And if it's too good to be true, it probably is.
• 6:07
  Sayde: And so you also don't want to undercut the value of your product that you've put a lot of time and energy and money into.
• 6:15
  Sayde: And it's great that like, I love it when authors say, Well, I'm not trying to make money.
• 6:20
  Sayde: Good, because you won't.
• 6:22
  Sayde: And so that's like a good mindset to be in.
• 6:25
  Sayde: Um, but don't let that mindset undercut the what can happen on the buyer's experience when they see that that price that feels really low.
• 6:33
  Sayde: It can go like, oh, hey, hang on, maybe this isn't, maybe this isn't actually a quality product.
• 6:39
  Joel: That's right.
• 6:41
  Joel: So let's dive into the actual details.
• 6:43
  Joel: Now that we've kind of set the mindset and the philosophy, I want to go through all three formats.
• 6:47
  Joel: Uh before I do that, though, I just want to say if you're enjoying this program, please like and subscribe on whatever platform you're on.
• 6:54
  Joel: Share this with your friends.
• 6:55
  Joel: If you're in a writer's group and you think this is interesting information, share it.
• 6:59
  Joel: We're trying to help people figure out how to do all this on their own with as much, uh, you know, with as much autonomy as they can.
• 7:05
  Joel: And that's why we do this show.
• 7:06
  Joel: So um, all right.
• 7:08
  Joel: So let's go through, I'm gonna let's go through the three main formats, right?
• 7:13
  Joel: And I'm gonna say one format is print, and I'm lumping paperback and hardcover together in that because the tactic for us is the same.
• 7:20
  Joel: Then we're gonna talk about ebooks, and then we'll talk about audiobooks.
• 7:23
  Joel: So, how do you price those three things?
• 7:24
  Joel: So when it comes to print books, that's hardcover and paperback, right?
• 7:29
  Joel: If we're if we're going by our philosophy, which is that price is not a motivating factor, so you want to charge as much as you can without making them think twice.
• 7:37
  Joel: How do you figure that out?
• 7:40
  Joel: Go ahead, City.
• 7:41
  Sayde: Well, you know, for the first thing that I tell authors to do, and I think this is where you were going as well, is to go and look at similar books in their genre, right?
• 7:51
  Sayde: We're not comparing apples to oranges, we're comparing apples to apples.
• 7:54
  Sayde: So books in your genre that are the same trim size that are relatively the same page count.
• 8:00
  Sayde: What are they charging?
• 8:02
  Sayde: And you you're gonna have a range.
• 8:03
  Sayde: There's gonna be a low end, there's gonna be a high end.
• 8:05
  Sayde: And if you're doing this research on Amazon, uh you want to go by the retail price, not by whatever price Amazon has maybe slashed that, right?
• 8:16
  Sayde: Because Amazon will do their discount thing where something is 20% off or it's 30% off, and you're getting it for a deal, but you want to actually be comparing what the original retail price was.
• 8:27
  Joel: That's awesome.
• 8:28
  Joel: So yeah, you can go, like Sayde said, go to Amazon.
• 8:31
  Joel: You can also go to a bookstore, right?
• 8:33
  Joel: I always like to follow the lead of the big publishers.
• 8:37
  Joel: This is their business.
• 8:37
  Joel: They're trying to maximize profits, they understand the market.
• 8:40
  Joel: They've got people, they've got people doing research on prices and you know, they've got big budgets for that kind of thing.
• 8:46
  Joel: Just do what they do.
• 8:47
  Joel: Go find out.
• 8:48
  Joel: I know it kind of feels boring and and vanilla, but just go in there, figure out what people, what the big publishers are charging for their books on Amazon, at a bookstore, find that range, and you can you can get that pretty quickly.
• 9:03
  Sayde: And make yourself a spreadsheet because you want to be tracking this information, right?
• 9:06
  Sayde: Because you're gonna have some decisions to make.
• 9:08
  Sayde: So start start tracking it in some way as you're at whether it, whether you're on Amazon or you're at a bookstore, um, make sure you're making note of what these prices are for the different formats.
• 9:18
  Sayde: Because I know we're lumping print together, but paperback books are gonna be cheaper usually than the hardcover option.
• 9:25
  Joel: That's right.
• 9:25
  Joel: So you you know you'll have your range for paperback, your range for hardcover, right?
• 9:29
  Joel: And you're gonna come up with your range.
• 9:32
  Joel: I suggest um everybody's gonna have their different kind of risk tolerance.
• 9:36
  Joel: I suggest uh charging at least the median.
• 9:39
  Joel: So let's say you find the range is between$15 and$20 for a paperback.
• 9:44
  Joel: I would say charge at least$17.50, which is halfway in between.
• 9:48
  Joel: And for me, who tends to be a little bit more aggressive, and I really do believe price is not a serious motivating factor, I would push it up towards the upper end of that range.
• 9:57
  Joel: Don't do the lower end of that range.
• 10:01
  Joel: All right, so that's that's print, and it's very simple.
• 10:04
  Joel: Um, and it's gonna get simpler because now we're gonna move into ebook.
• 10:08
  Joel: Um, the thing about ebook is not only does not only does does there tend to be uh a range of what other publishers charge, when you're publishing a book through Amazon and different self-publishing platforms, um, they are going, they have a range that they want you to charge also.
• 10:26
  Joel: And they've set up their royalty structure to encourage that.
• 10:29
  Joel: So the way Amazon works is um if a uh ebook is priced between, is it$299 and$9.99?
• 10:37
  Sayde: I believe that is still what it is.
• 10:39
  Sayde: Yes.
• 10:40
  Joel: It needs to be above$299 and it needs to be below$9.99.
• 10:44
  Joel: And if that's the case, you will get a 70% royalty.
• 10:48
  Joel: However, if it's below$299 or above$99,$9.99, you'll only get a 30% royalty.
• 10:54
  Joel: So, uh, and they're doing that because they've they've found that consumers, that's the acceptable range of pricing for consumers, right?
• 11:02
  Joel: And they want you to, they want you to be charging that amount.
• 11:05
  Joel: Um, I don't know about you, Sayde, but for me in my life as a as a book buyer,$9.99 is just automatic.
• 11:14
  Joel: I am so used to a book costing$9.99 uh for an ebook that I'll never think twice about it.
• 11:22
  Joel: And so I always suggest people just go ahead and charge$9.99.
• 11:25
  Joel: It's the most you can get and still get the 70% royalty.
• 11:28
  Joel: And everyone's used to paying that amount.
• 11:31
  Joel: And that is going to be a motivated buyer anyway.
• 11:34
  Sayde: That's interesting.
• 11:35
  Sayde: That uh that reflects how differently we read books.
• 11:40
  Sayde: Um, I would say that that's probably true for nonfiction books for sure, for fiction, particularly genre fiction, um, books that are enrolled in KDP Select and that are available on that Kindle Unlimited subscription.
• 11:53
  Sayde: You know, those books are probably a little more in the lower to mid-range,$4.99 to$7.99, somewhere in there, right?
• 12:02
  Sayde: They might be a shorter read and something that you're going to consume really quickly with even within a day.
• 12:08
  Sayde: And so it feels like you're you want to pay a little bit less for that.
• 12:12
  Sayde: That is a particularly good strategy if you have lots of books in your catalog as an author, um, maybe a series of books, right?
• 12:20
  Sayde: You might charge a low amount,$3.99,$4.99 for that first book and then go up a little bit for books two, three, four, five in the series, because you're kind of capturing your reader with book one.
• 12:30
  Sayde: Um, and so if it's if it's shorter genre fiction, you might consider dropping that price a little bit.
• 12:35
  Sayde: But one thing I do want to mention with both ebook and print versions, these prices are not set in stone.
• 12:43
  Sayde: You can change them all the time, every day if you wanted to, right?
• 12:47
  Sayde: By just logging into your metadata, logging into your dashboard and going to the pricing table in the metadata and updating your price.
• 12:55
  Sayde: The only thing that you can't do is you can't drop your ebook down to zero or down to 99 cents for an extended period of time.
• 13:04
  Sayde: And you're only allowed to do that a few times a year, but you can you can play around with your pricing.
• 13:09
  Sayde: Maybe you start at 999 for that ebook, uh, and then you know the holidays are coming up and you're like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna run a little bit of a discount and we're gonna drop the price.
• 13:18
  Sayde: And you update your your data and it takes about 24 hours for that to be reflected on the buyer's end, and and boom, you've adjusted your price.
• 13:27
  Joel: And I would, I would actually, I would, I would add a word of tremendous caution when you're messing around with prices, because if you're investing in significant uh advertising or marketing resources, right?
• 13:39
  Joel: Um, and you and you're not yet sure about your audience, I would not tweak your price as one of the first things you should do.
• 13:48
  Joel: Because again, I think most in most cases you're going to be leaving money on the table.
• 13:52
  Joel: If you followed our advice and you've priced your book according to what consumers expect, don't fall victim to the mindset of, oh, well, if we drop the price, Economics 101 says that the sales will go up because it's a different product than, you know, uh widgets.
• 14:12
  Sayde: Absolutely.
• 14:12
  Sayde: And there's lots of things that you can adjust on the back end uh before you if if your book is not selling.
• 14:18
  Sayde: And that's a whole different conversation about, you know, a book that's sitting on the shelf and that's not selling.
• 14:23
  Sayde: And there's lots that you can adjust on that back end uh to potentially drive more sales, other than just the price.
• 14:29
  Sayde: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Joel: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Joel: Great.
• 14:31
  Joel: So uh ebook, same rule applies, right?
• 14:34
  Joel: Except so we've got there is a range,$299 to$9.99, right?
• 14:39
  Joel: And uh what we're Sayde and I are both saying is go and see what what people are charging in your uh in your genre and your length and find that range and charge accordingly within that meta range.
• 14:53
  Joel: Now, I will say there is one tricky thing if you have a nonfiction book.
• 14:58
  Joel: Um many times nonfiction books, the way that publishers will do their release is they will they will release the hardcover and they'll charge roughly$30 for the hardcover, and they will not have a paperback option, but they will have an ebook option.
• 15:12
  Joel: Um, but they will price that ebook opt option, they will price that ebook more at the$16 to$17 range.
• 15:19
  Joel: And the reason they're doing that, they know they're going to get a lower royalty per sale, but the reason they're charging more is that they don't want there to be such a huge difference between the hardcover price and the ebook price because they're afraid consumers will all buy that ebook instead of paying the$30 for the hardcover, which is where they really make the money.
• 15:40
  Joel: And so they charge, I'm I'm I'm pretty sure it even adds up to the it they'll end up making the same amount of profit on 30% royalty at a higher price than they would at 70% royalty at a lower price.
• 15:55
  Joel: Um so when you're doing that research, just be careful.
• 15:58
  Joel: You know, you know, if you're looking, if you're seeing that ebooks are tending to be higher priced, make a note of whether or not they only have a hardcover option and that they're they're trying to maximize that profit.
• 16:12
  Joel: Okay.
• 16:13
  Joel: Um so let's go to the last one.
• 16:15
  Joel: And the last one, this is the simplest of all.
• 16:17
  Joel: So the last one is audiobook.
• 16:18
  Joel: And the thing about audiobooks is that if you're publishing through the major audiobook publishing platforms, Audible, Amazon, those different places, their royalty, they don't even let you set the price.
• 16:30
  Joel: They set the price.
• 16:31
  Sayde: They do now ask you for a suggested price, which is a newer feature, but you kind of get to let ACX, which is the back end of Audible, know I would love to charge this much for my audiobook.
• 16:47
  Sayde: But they're gonna override that and they're gonna they're gonna charge based on the length of the book.
• 16:52
  Joel: Right.
• 16:53
  Joel: And so again, if you want to figure out what the suggested price should be, go do your research.
• 16:59
  Joel: Go do your research.
• 17:02
  Joel: So very simple.
• 17:03
  Joel: Um, we have an article on this as well, and which we'll link to.
• 17:06
  Joel: Um, we also have a related article I think is worth looking at when you're um trying to figure out pricing, which is what how what are the self-royalty, self-publishing royalty structures?
• 17:16
  Joel: So you can start to get a sense, you know, of the economics of all this.
• 17:20
  Joel: So um, yeah, if you have if anybody has any questions or or competing theories of pricing that they have found to work for themselves, we would love to hear about it.