Earlier today I had a heated argument with someone close to me and while I love a good debate, I couldn’t deny that the points they made regarding the book’s pricing were very valid. Their points were as follows:
1) The price doesn’t reflect the quality of the work.
2) Lower prices mean lower royalties on Sales.
3) Lowering the price may present the appearance of not having enough faith in the material
4) Lowering the prices to encourage exposure isn’t a good reason. All I was doing was shortchanging myself in the long run.
If you recall, I made an announcement some time ago that I was lowering the Kindle Price from $4.99 to $2.99. The intention for the price change was to make the book more attractive to potential buyers. Well, dropping the price made no difference whatsoever and seemed to have the opposite effect among those who had previously bought it and contacted me about it wondering why such a drastic (their view) drop in price. My explanation didn’t appear to be satisfactory to anyone involved.
Then, there were the articles that came to my attention recently about customers demanding more free books and the backlash among authors who feel (rightfully so) that they should be paid for their efforts. While making money is low on my list of priorities, I’m not a fan of working for free.
I’m sure that you can guess where I’m going with this. Parallax is back at its Kindle Price of $4.99 and no more shuffling of the economic deck. If people buy it, they buy it. If not, then I move on to the next project. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Writing in Real Time 
As a writer, I 100% want every writer to be fairly compensated.Bottom line: new books are too cheap. They just are. How crazy is it that a year or more of hard labor can result in a product that is sold for the price of a Starbucks coffee. Biggest problem: books are too easy to pirate and post online as PDFs –for free. Coming from a broke consumer’s perspective, I like a good deal. Even if there’s a popular book I want to buy, I can’t afford to buy it for at price, so I’ll wait until it’s offered at a discounted price. If that doesn’t happen, I have to wait and buy it used or borrow it from the library.
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I put a lot of thought into the prices I set and I think I strike a good balance between quality and cost. Of course, it’s all trial and error for the most part…hehe.
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I’m glad you came to this conclusion. Honestly, I was a little disappointed that you’d reduced the price, because $2.99 for a novel is pretty low. Even if it’s “self-published”, $4.99 ought to be the starting price for any full length work with a shred of effort put into it.
But I wasn’t going to have a heated argument with you about it, ha! I try to let people live their lives and work by their own methods. I do, in principle, believe that fair prices give the appearance of quality work though. A $2.99 novel tells me that the author didn’t work hard on it/they aren’t confident in it/they’re desperate for sales/etc.
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Yep, and no more price changes. 🙂
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Your decision is very sensible. I believe that someone who wants to buy a book will buy it and to bring it down to such price is shortchanging yourself in the long run especially after all the hard work put in. Just leave it as it is and keep marketing it without price changes.
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Yep, fiddling with the price hasn’t done a bit of good for me and it seems that sales have started picking up today. 🙂
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Great. Just leave it as it is. Afterall, it’s for the long haul and over time, it will pay you better 🙂
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Absolutely. I also got into a bad habit of hovering over sales statistics as well instead of putting out new material. I didn’t sign on for that…hehe.
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