You're Pricing Your Books Wrong

This is Part II of a series on converting new readers to your books. We play a game of connect-the-dots for potential readers in order to get them to convert from potential sales to fans of our writing.

I know. I get it, trust me. You're just an indie author. You're no Stephen King, Lee Child, or (insert a famous author here). When you look around the Amazon marketplace, you see every other Indie-author advertising their books for $2.99 to $3.99. In fact, Amazon will likely recommend you price it that way according to the length of your book. But I am telling you that is 100% wrong. Yes, this is just my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, but I am very passionate about it. Especially since I have done a ton of research to find the magical sweet spot for where my books need to be priced.

You need to change your mindset on pricing your book. The goal here is not how much profit you can squeeze out of a single book sale. The purpose of pricing, especially in this day and age, is to use it as a marketing tool. It is a tool to convince your reader to buy your book.

What do I mean?

One of the things we talked about last time was slapping your reader in the face with a good opening paragraph to your book. Why? Because when a potential customer arrives on your page, one of the things they will do is open the preview and read a few paragraphs to see if they might like it. So, you have a good opening hook that slaps them in the face. Another thing they will do is see how much the book costs. But this is 80% irrelevant. Why? because 80% of your customer, or more, will be downloading the book for free because they are on the Kindle Unlimited program. The cost means nothing to them. But they still check anyway. Why? Because they are looking to establish the value of your book. It is a subconscious thing. They can't help themselves.

If one indie author has their book priced at $2.99, but another who has the same basic style book of the same approximate length and is priced at $5.99 or more, who do you think is going to win? The customer looks at the price and says, "OK, this writer must have a good one. They must know what they're doing." The price is establishing value in the customer's mind.

AND.... since 80% of your customers are going to be downloading for free anyway, what does it matter? You could slap a $1000 price tag on your book and it wouldn't make a difference because your profit margins will remain the same. OK, I am being facetious, but you get the point.

Pricing is a tool. Not a profit gauge for a single book sale.