I want to let you know about e-book pricing, what I’ve found has happened and has worked for me over this past few days and you can take away any thoughts, nuggets of wisdom, or not, for yourself, should you find any.
This weekend I put Shallow Waters, my police procedural crime novel on a price promotion discount over all the countries it was selling on and the platforms, Amazon and Kobo. It equated to about half price. In the UK, it was discounted to from £1.99 to 99p and in the US it was discounted from $2.99 to $1.49.
The reason for this was to see if it would help move sales along any. I’d released it just over a month ago. I had good daily sales and was making some money on the 70% option of Amazon’s pricing plan. But it was steady and I’m a little impatient. I wanted to experiment. To see if a promotion would help or hinder; 1. My income with the drop to the 35% income bracket and 2. The sales ranking of the book itself.
I decided it was a weekend only offer as I didn’t expect to sell enough books to make what the 70% was making me, but the great thing about being an indie author is you can experiment to your heart’s content.
So, the weekend is over and what have I found?
I have found that the drop in price has increased my sales and increased them enough to be making me per day, what I was making at the original price where I was earning 70% of the sales. The increased sales have also moved the novel up the sales chart, thereby increasing visibility of the book and hopefully garnering it more sales.
So with that evidence collated from the weekend, I shall be continuing the promotion for an unknown period of time.
I had thought the day of the 99p e-book was over and authors were pricing their work higher. The Amazon top 10 chart is filled with books at higher prices and yet I have found sales have gone up. I can’t promise it will stay on promotion because these recently sold books may not be read, and then may not be reviewed. Sales may drop off and putting it back up may be the sensible thing to do. It’s the thoughtful decisions that come with publishing your own book as I’ve found.
Pricing your e-book is not a decision to rush into. You need to think about it and consider the reasons behind the decision. But also realise you can change your mind at any given time.
For me, Shallow Waters is staying on promotion, on Amazon UK, Amazon US (all others) and Kobo.
MarinaSofia says
Interesting! Just goes to show you can’t trust all those rumours of ‘this is so over’. Well done, pleased it worked for you!
Rebecca Bradley says
Thanks Marina.
crimeworm says
Agree with Marina – I wasn’t sure how much percentage self-published writers got from Amazon, so this was an education. Let’s hope sales stay high and keep the book visible – fingers crossed!
Rebecca Bradley says
Thank you. Fingers crossed 🙂
danpentagram says
It’s a tough balance, in my opinion. I’ve just uploaded all of Autumn Orchard’s books onto Google Play – their pricing system is completely different to KDP!
Rebecca Bradley says
Google Play is on my list of places to add Shallow Waters to. It’s next after I’ve masters Nook!
danpentagram says
I’d be very interested in your thoughts about doing kobo and nook separately – I’ve always used Smashwords for those
Rebecca Bradley says
Kobo was simple. Nook is more difficult because of some issue with chapter breaks which I’m having to do manually.
Alex J. Cavanaugh (@AlexJCavanaugh) says
Glad you didn’t lose any money.
What makes a huge difference is where you advertise that reduced price. There’s a post at the IWSG that lists all the places you can do that. Maybe try one of them as well.
Rebecca Bradley says
Thanks Alex. I’ll have a look.
Janet O'Kane says
This is very interesting. Because my ebook is currently exclusive to Amazon, I can only price promote for a week at a time, although I do keep the 70% royalty even at the lower price. I found this frustrating, as No Stranger to Death’s week last summer at 99p/99c saw a daily increase in sales and just as it was building momentum and had reached Number 5 in the Scottish crime chart, it had to go back to its higher price. I’m considering dropping the exclusivity in the month leading up to the launch of my second book, in order to sell as many copies as possible, both to promote Book 2 (the first chapter will be at the end of Book 1) and maximise my income to pay for the cost of cover, editing etc. I’ll be watching what happens to your book’s extended promotion, and I hope it continues to do well, Rebecca.
Rebecca Bradley says
Thanks, Janet. I didn’t realise that you didn’t have free reign over your book pricing if you were tied in with Amazon Janet. I just presumed it was full of benefits which were why people went with them. I think there are pluses and minuses to the Select programme. It’s a fine line. I’m not selling much outside of Amazon, but I wanted that choice there.
Margot Kinberg says
Rebecca – Thank you so much for sharing this information. Of course, I’m delighted you’re making good sales, too! I think it’s important for today’s authors to keep tabs on such things and to really think about what strategies will work best for them. I appreciate your taking the time to break this all down for us.
Rebecca Bradley says
You’re welcome, Margot. It was interesting to watch from my point of view so I thought I’d share it. 🙂
pamjplumb says
Reblogged this on Pam Plumb and commented:
Another interesting and useful post by Rebecca – thanks for your thoughts 🙂
Rebecca Bradley says
Thank you, Pam and thank you for sharing!
Jacqui Murray says
Good discussion, Rebecca. You have me thinking.
Rebecca Bradley says
It’s certainly hard work this self-publishing lark, Janet. So much to think about and do. I need to remember to keep writing the next one. But I’m happy to share my experiences as I go along. 🙂
D.A.Cairns says
Congrats on the sales. I tried the same thing and it had no effect. My sales suck. My fourth novel will be released this year by Rogue Phoenix Press but I am still not getting any attention. Can’t even get people to write reviews. Blah, blah, blah. That is the end of my complaining session.
Rebecca Bradley says
Thank you. I’m sorry you still aren’t getting the sales. Maybe rethink your marketing plan? Look at what you are doing in a dispassionate way and then look at what you can give your readers? It’s a lot of work, but for me I don’t see it as work because all I’m doing is engaging with people and it’s what I enjoy doing and it is fun. The hard work is just the platforms like Amazon and Nook and deciding on things like pricing points on your own. But with having a blogging community to talk it through with, it’s less scary and less lonely. Maybe forget about selling for a while and start enjoying youself online, look at all your online places, like your blog, twitter? Facebook? Instagram? are they all linked? are they all saying and doing the same thing? are they all fun? Giving people something to come back for? Do they look inviting? Clean and tidy? Look at your profile, does it need updating? Lots of things to do and think about. How often do you blog? Do you blog with your readers in mind? I hope this helps. Good luck.
D.A.Cairns says
Thanks Rebecca.
Annalisa Crawford says
The genre of the book makes a difference, and you write in a very popular one – when I bought your book on Sunday (because your mention of the promotion reminded me I hadn’t bought it) you were at #407 in the overall Amazon UK chart…. which is awesomely amazing!
My genre is less popular, and less likely to be swayed by promotions. I gather I’m considered more literary, which is great because I’ll probably have my books studied by school kids in 2077, but not so good for sales right now 🙂
Rebecca Bradley says
I think you’re right, Annalisa, that genre does make a difference. I think crime and romance are the top genres to write in and that sell well. And thank you for buying and noticing! I do hope you enjoy it!
I do think platform does have a little sway though. You have a strong platform. I’ve bought, read and reviewed one of your books because I know you whereas I might not have otherwise have done. But you’re right, I was listening to a Joanna Penn’s podcast this morning that is aimed at self-publishers and she was interviewing someone and there was a comment that literary fiction doesn’t sell as well when it’s self published as some of the other genre fictions. But we write because we need to and because we want to put our stories out there, so I hope you continue to write because you want to. I know you’re taking a month off, but I do hope you go back to it.
suefortin says
Hi Rebecca, my publisher seems to have the same strategy as you. My book originally published at £2.48 and it sold okay but when it was dropped to 99p it really took off. A couple of times since then the price has gone up but the geeks in charge of the pricing structure at the publishers, swiftly drop it back down to 99p. I can correlate the price increase with a drop in the ranking very easily.
I do think 99p is cheap for a book but it’s the cut throat digital world and I do worry when I see big named books for as little as 40p, 20p etc obviously just pitching for the top sales ranking spot.
Thanks for the post, it was very interesting.
Sue
x
Rebecca Bradley says
I’m glad you enjoyed it Sue.
My argument with the costing of books and the people who think we under-price our books at 99p don’t see the overall return we get. Surely that is the value of all the hard work we put in, not the individual price we make one person at a time pay? In fact, isn’t that another blog topic altogether for another time? 😉
But yes, the sales are still up, so that’s why the price is still down. If the sales start to come down and I start to lose the money I was already earning, then I may as well put my price back up, but as it is, my sales are up and more importantly, my visibility is rising, which is what we need in such a competitive market.