One of the bitterest pills to swallow as a self-published author is how much work you have to do before you make so much as a single cent. It can take months, or even years to complete a single book, and if it’s your first book…
Well being a book author can be a lot like farming. When you have a book idea, that’s the seed. When you are writing that book idea, you are planting that seed and tending to it so that it will grow.
But as a farmer… you don’t collect a single cent from that planting or tending until you’ve finally harvested the fruit from that seed and gotten someone to pay you for the fruit. Farmers are in the business of selling the “fruit” of their labor; writers and authors are no different.
And like a first-time farmer, even though you may know what the price of fruit in general is, that doesn’t mean you know how much to charge for YOUR fruit. Complaining about the price of fruit at the grocery store as you are loading up your cart is very different from deciding how much to charge for the time, expense, and effort. After all, you just spent months or even years coaxing that fruit to life and all of that time should play a role in terms of setting a price for it in the marketplace.
While there’s a bit that goes into setting the price, here’s the bad news, the good news, and the easiest way to solve your dilemma.
The Bad News
Let’s get the bad news out of the way.
Your book is only worth what someone else thinks it is. That’s the truth not only about your book, but about literally everything that can be bought or sold. Nestle is practically FAMOUS for inflating the price of their bottled water – a resource that literally falls from the sky periodically.
So the bad news is that there is no “price” you “should” sell your book or bottled water for. The price should be whatever people are willing to pay for it. And you don’t know what people are going to be willing to pay for it because the same book can have different prices.
The Good News
Your book is only worth what someone else thinks it is.
It might be worth even more to someone else.
That’s the truth not only about your book, but about literally everything that can be bought or sold. Nestle is practically FAMOUS for inflating the price of their bottled water – a resource that literally falls from the sky periodically.
Water actually costs MORE than beer, which takes time to brew and includes water as an ingredient, which means that beer costs more to make but sells for less money than water alone.
So the bad news is that there is no “price” you “should” sell your book or bottled water for. The price should be whatever people are willing to pay for it. And you don’t know what people are going to be willing to pay for it because the same book can have different prices.
But the best part about that is, that selling a book for too little can be just as bad as selling it for too much. This is known in marketing as perceived value, which is why what follows is a complete listing of the various prices of a single, popular book.
The Various Prices of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone – also known as Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone.
- https://amzn.to/3kaUuZJ
- https://amzn.to/33n31CV
- https://amzn.to/2PBjDyR
- https://amzn.to/2ETMHzv
- https://amzn.to/3fwsVGC
- https://amzn.to/31iJFfp
- https://amzn.to/2DAVntC
- https://amzn.to/30une86
- https://amzn.to/2DwRTIH
- https://amzn.to/30sxYUr
- https://amzn.to/2DmGI5J
- https://amzn.to/2Xu2SK3
- https://amzn.to/3i6iOKh
- https://amzn.to/2Dv12S6
That’s all the same book. Some versions are different languages, some versions have illustrations, and some versions are 1st editions. But many of them are simply different printings of the same book.
The takeaway here is that ALL of these books are being bought by different types of readers. The same books sells between $6 and $90 to different types of readers. As a new author, your book won’t necessarily sell for $90 right out the gate, but as long as it is considered a “fair price” for the “market” (which is just what everyone else is selling similar books for), feel free to charge towards the upper end of that fair rate for your first book.
The Easiest Way To Price Your Book
This is almost a waste of a paragraph but…
Just copy the pricing of the person that is the most successful example of what sort book you are publishing. If it is fiction, look at the prices of the best-selling books in fiction. If it is self-help, or business, or how to teach 3 legged Irish Setters how to yodel – copy the pricing of what’s already working.
Because if you are worried about what to charge for your book, you probably haven’t thought about how you are going to let people know you have a book to sell. After all, it is when you are advertising and promoting your book that you will have a REAL chance to test which “book price” helps you to sell the most books.
Remember when I said earlier that your book might be worth even more than people think, because of the perceived value of your book? You might have missed it, but it’s probably the most important piece of information in this article.
Think of it like this…
Some of the worst books ever written have become popular simply because they had a great cover that helped them sell a lot of copies of the book. Those books that had great covers that helped them get popular in spite of the bad writing inside were the product of good marketing. So those books didn’t sell for the lowest price possible, or the highest.
Charge too much, and people will avoid buying if they feel the price isn’t worth it.
Charge too little, and people will avoid buying it if they feel it’s cheap for a good reason.
Staying competitive, and a bit “high”, if backed up by a good presentation is the “sweet spot” for pricing that you either get lucky the first time you put your book up for sale…
Or you found through a longer process of trial and error.
Plan for the trial and error part of your pricing process, and just get your book up with a competitive price on it. If it doesn’t sell, it’s not the price you have to worry about.
