How to Price Your Book
How to Price Your Book Course Introduction
The research is done and the thousands of hours of writing, proofreading and editing are complete and your book is ready for market….. except for one thing, the price!
Many authors say the price of their book was just an afterthought others say they thought they would start by pricing their book for free to gain some traction, so this is a good point to tell you, never give your book for free, unless its to publishers, agents or reviewers. In most cases a free book has very limited perceived value.
A few authors tell us that they knew all along what they wanted to sell their book for, if you fall into this catagory maybe you should do this short course anyway to ensure you got the price right.
Understanding Your Market
If you took one of our courses titled “How to Write For a Single Audience but Many Markets” this section should be simple. Selling your book is a business and just like any other business selling a product, its vital to know your market before you figure out how to price your book.
I am going to assume you have created an audience profile and listed the places where you are going to sell your book, but if you haven’t already done this task, I suggest you complete the “How to Write For a Single Audience but Many Markets.” course before continuing. It can be found by clicking here.
Okay, we are ready to begin, “How to Price Your Book”. Please continue on and complete our 4 step plan to finding the right price for your book.
Task 1
Research similar books and list how many fall under the following price brackets; $1-3, $3-5, $5-10, $10-12, $12-16 $16-20 $20+. We picked these pricing ranges as they have been used by publishers for many years. Repeat this exercise for each book format.
Task 2
Now you know understand how your competitions books are priced it time to decide which price bracket you wish to place your book in. The exact price of your book is not important at this moment.
Task 3
Visit Writers Out Publishing to get an idea of print and distribution costs, by clicking here.
You should then come up with a cost price for hard cover (if you are going to have this as a format) paperback and eBook. In order to do this calculation you will also need to decide if you want your book in full cover and which is your preferred trim size.
The average cost of printing and shipping a book that has 150 pages that is in black and white with a color cover will be around $4 within the US.
Task 4
This is where you will need to decide on a final price of you’re book. You should take into consideration all of the tasks you have completed. If the cost to manufacture your book is $4 and the average retailer is going to take 50% then you will want to price over $8. eBooks don’t have any print costs so you can sell them at half the price and make more than twice the profit, so take the time to consider pricing for each format of you’re book.
As a general rule you want to make between $1-5 for every paperback book you sell. The profit margin will depend largely on demand and competition.
Course Conclusion of How to Price You’re Book
Pricing your book can be personal and emotional but remember if you price you’re book higher than your competition then you are less likely to sell books but price you’re book too low and you may loose money with print and distribution costs. You have to find a price that balances the cost and what people are willing to pay for you’re book.
If you are wondering why some authors sell their book so cheap on Amazon, the answer is usually that the publisher didn’t sell their full print run and they are discounting the book to get rid of the copies at a loss or the print run is so large that they can print books very cheap.
If you are a self-publishing author we don’t advise you to print more than 150 copies of your book at once as Writers Out will print books for you on demand at the same price many more copies would usually cost. To learn more, please click here.
