How much should you sell your new eBook for? The one you spent months or years writing, not to mention (most likely) funding. Most often I see people price an eBook based on Amazon’s royalty structure (generally, prices outside $2.99 to $9.99 get a 35% commission). Some might look at production values, the niche it serves, or even competitive eBooks (always good). Authors publishing their first title are especially resistive to pricing low. I don’t believe there is a magic eBook price … [Read more...]
Holiday Book Pricing and Self-Publishers: Where are we headed next year? Bonus: Will Facebook Shake Down Authors?
I think this is going to be the sales season that eBooks came into their own as a holiday gift item and in the process rock the world of all book prices perhaps well into the future. [This is a twofer post: see below regarding the Facebook article.] As always, Amazon is in the middle of it and in two different ways. The most obvious was their Cyber Monday sale. Not only were eBook prices slashed but they were giving a 30% discount on any book you bought (I think the max discount was $10. … [Read more...]
Manage Your Published eBook Using Apple iTunes Connect-Sales, Payments, Promotions, Price and Metadata
Selling eBooks in the Apple iBookstore is not as straight forward as it is in the Nook or Kindle stores. For one thing to get your eBooks into the store you need to download a huge software program called iTunes Producer and it only works on a Mac. No doubt this is why alternative options such as Bookbaby, Smashwords, Lulu, etc. are popular. But if you used your Mac, or you hired someone like AuthorImprints to setup your iBookstore distribution, you can manage and monitor key details from any … [Read more...]
Amazon Expands KDP Select to Include Kindle Countdown Deals Benefit
Kindle Countdown Deals is not a new program but an extension of the KDP Select program, the exclusive sales commitment publishers make with Amazon in return for certain promotional benefits. Originally the primary benefit included the ability to promote your eBook for free for up to 5, 24 hour periods. Click here to learn more about KDP Select. Kindle Countdown Deals addresses the chief complain I heard from publishers: we don’t want to give our book away for free! Now publishers have a … [Read more...]
Amazon Kindle MatchBook Essentials: An FAQ for Publishers
Kindle MatchBook Essentials is another of our quick reference guides to what you need to know about an important self-publishing topic. (Click here for our popular ISBN Essentials and here for Copyright Essentials.) 5 Basics: You must have a print edition of your eBook to participate. The only shoppers that can buy your eBook at the MatchBook price are those that buy or have bought—at any time from Amazon—your print book edition. You—the publisher—decides if, when and how long to … [Read more...]
Kindle MatchBook Moves Amazon Further Ahead-But will publishers sign-on?
Have you ever debated whether to buy the print edition, or the eBook edition? Both have their uses. Why can't they be sold with a bundled price? The answer is Amazon's Kindle Matchbook and it allows buyers of print books to buy the eBook at a deep discount--between $0 and $2.99 depending on your eBooks current price. Most people would probably not buy both so this becomes essentially an upsell for the publisher, and Amazon. Three important points for publishers to know: You decided … [Read more...]
Kindle eBook Royalties: 70% vs. 35% and 6 Essential Things You Need to Know
Who doesn’t want to get a 70% royalty!? I can’t think of anyone that would but it does help to understand the quirks and rules that determine when you get the higher royalty, and when you don’t. And what you have to agree to in order to get it. Here are what I consider to be the essential 6 things everyone should know about Amazon’s Kindle royalty structure. If you don’t like any of the items on this list you will have to select the 35% royalty or contact Amazon (good luck!). Keep in mind … [Read more...]
Color vs. Black and White Printing Using CreateSpace
There is a significant cost difference when producing a CreateSpace print on demand book in color vs. the same book in standard black and white. Here's an example: 6" x 9", 150 page book, selling for $19.99. Royalty $.64 for Color (yes, 64 cents) $9.34 for Black Buying a copy for yourself $11.35 for Color $2.65 for Black Ouch! Why such a big difference? CreateSpace is not counting the number of pages that have to be printed in color. As far as they care you can print the … [Read more...]
Why eBook Prices Are Dropping and 3 Lessons for Pricing Self-Published Books
If you are publishing one book, or have only a handful of books, how do you know what price to charge? You have no or little hard data about how readers might respond to your writing. You certainly know what you'd like to earn—an objective often guided by the royalties paid by the online stores. But the reality is that pricing is more often than not dictated by a broader market filled with thousands of eBooks under $10, many of them on best seller lists. With the demise of agency pricing … [Read more...]
Competing on Ebook Pricing-A Perspective from Author John Locke
Today's Wall Street Journal ran an interesting piece about pricing ebooks and quoted author John Locke (Saving Rachel, Follow the Stone, etc). He was referring to his $.99 pricing vs. the $9.99 (and up) pricing for works from "highly successful authors". "...I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I'm as good as them, rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me". It goes on to say that he had 369,000 downloads on Amazon in March, up from … [Read more...]
