Why I Sell My Novel For 99 Cents

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• I agree with everything you say. I don't think I've ever said that to a women before... :) However... ah you were right there is a 'but'.

  I dropped the price of my ebook 'Call me Aphrodite' to $0.99 to try and gain some sales and increase my visibility. It didn't work. I am currently selling at an average of 1.5 books per week. So I have increased the price of my ebook to $2.99 because I don't want it to be associated with (and possibly swamped by) the huge number of short stories of 1,200 to 1,500 words that are getting published now at $0.99. My novel is 75,000 words. Later, as my online profile increases and my knowledge of marketing improves, I may go back down to $0.99 for exactly the reasons you suggest. But at the moment I have not seen any difference in sales. I think the $0.99 price works better as a loss leader if you have more than one book to sell or as the first in a series when books 2 and 3 are out.

  But I can see why you are doing it, and my best wishes to your success.

  • Thanks Christopher. Yes, I think this post ties back to my launch process post which got me initial rankings, and then I was able to keep the rankings with the lower price. It's definitely a function of platform as well as price. I just wanted to put up a post on it as I get SO many questions!

  • Good analysis, Christopher. I have found exactly same. Nice to confirm.

• Hi there :) I'm a long-time reader, first time commenter. I read your post this morning but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Almost everything you said here, as a reason to price your book as you have, resonate with me, but the one that made me stop short like I'd been punched in the gut was your final one. I had to re-read it twice to be sure I understood it. As a writer of fiction I have put *years* into my fiction work, researching, writing, re-writing, meticulously line editing, and while it should entertain it also as all fiction should aim to do, sheds light on humanity and aspects of being human for someone who reads to reflect on. Simply because they are "entertaining" should not be a reason to dismiss it as being worth less than non-fiction. Harry Potter, Great Expectations, Brick Lane, White Teeth, Life of Pi, etc etc etc are not worth less simply because they are fiction. . . to say so is to devalue the passion and heart and hard work of many many years so many of us put into the fiction we write.

  • Hi Aisha,
    I certainly didn't mean to offend - so apologies for that. But this is just my opinion - and I don't mean to devalue the work we all put in as writers. It's that I personally will pay more for non-fiction that has actionable or valuable content, whereas 99% of all fiction I read will not be re-read. Of course, some fiction will touch the soul and may affect people deeply, and may contain meanings below the surface, but there are non-fiction books I read again and again and whose meanings have changed my life.
    *For me* I would put Jack Canfield's The Success Principles as more valuable than Harry Potter. I would include Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams and Reflections are worth more than Dickens (who wrote to entertain) and although I loved Life of Pi and Brick Lane, I thought more about The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I'm not devaluing the writer or the passion - as fiction writers make far more sales than non-fiction writers (generally). I am just saying that for me, I pay more for non fiction.
    Again, apologies for any upset and thanks so much for commenting. We have some great debates here!

    • No no, I didn't mean to seem upset by any of this!!! I respect your opinion and because I enjoy your blog so much I wanted to chime in here on this particular point. I didn't mean to make anything heated. It's okay that we have different takes on the values of a certain books, I still respect your take on this, I was just very surprised since I had not heard that brought up before as a reason to list fiction at the 99 cent rate- no offense at all taken! We are all entitled to have our opinions and I respect your opinion on this!! I just wanted to share my own take on this but I hope I didn't offend you!

      • I love that we are all so polite :) I'm really happy with respectful debate so thank you for your points and I hope you comment again!

    • You've written a great post that many feel passionate about, Joanna. I'm publishing a short novel with Amazon soon called 'Souls For Sale.' One of the hardest details to figure out is what to price it. But you've convinced me 99 cents is the way to go. I want readers, better yet, loyal readers, and I want them to multiply like weeds. As far as Aisha's comments and your reply to them, art is nothing if it's not entertainment, regardless of the field or style one works in. There's only one question the artist needs to ask him or herself during the process; have I allowed all my technique and creativeness to surface in order to craft the best piece of work I'm capable of? If the answer is yes, then you will be taken seriously by an audience large or small, and you'll be entertaining. Concerns over what piece of work in whatever field being more valuable than another won't matter.

• Hi Joanna. I'm writing a series also, and my plan is to price the first book at $0.99 as well. I may drop the price to free once in a while, after the other books in the series are out. My goals are the same as yours: make it easy for readers to give me a try, at an impulse-buy price point.

  A great thing about self-publishing is that you can do price experiments. Your goal is to find the pricing sweet spot that earns you the most money, and that sweet spot can change over time. You have to sell about six times as many books at 99 cents as you do at $2.99 to break even on earnings, but if you can actually sell *ten* times as many books, you are actually coming out ahead at the lower price point. I applaud your willingness to perform the marketing experiment!

  The best thing you can do to improve your sales though is to publish more books in the series. That's another thing that Joe K. harps about: the best way for a writer to increase his earnings on any individual title is to write more books. They cross-sell each other. You need to take up more virtual shelf space!

  ************************
  Aisha:

  I think you are confusing cost with value. What your books cost you to produce them in terms of effort and time has little bearing on how readers value them. If your book is strictly entertainment (an expense to your readers), it will be perceived with less value than a book that helps someone make money or save money, as most good non-fiction books do.

  If you are taking years to produce a book, you have to accept that most of your satisfaction must come from the process of writing itself. The monetary rewards will only reflect your investment if you are able to sell your meticulously-produced prose to a large number of people who have a short attention span. Your readers probably won't appreciate what went behind the book you offer to them.

  I personally think your best bet would be to leverage all that research you've done to build a platform through a blog or social networking. Attract readers to your areas of passion, and you will attract potential buyers for your book.

  • James - I absolutely need to get on with writing Prophecy! I have people signing up for it every day and I realize the best thing I can do is to get it written and out there. I've plotted and I'm 10,000 words in. It's just this moving countries thing that is distracting me right now :)

    • Are you willing to share your plotting technique? I'm using Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method to develop plot and character, and I'm using Larry Brooks' Beat Sheet to arrange my scenes. Sorry if you've already posted this info somewhere. I just started following your blog in the last few weeks.

      Good luck with the move! Maybe you can join us for the Self Publishers Online Conference next year.

• Hi Joanna,
  I just made the $2.99 to .99 switch last night and watched my rank drop 30,000 points overnight and it's still dropping. I did all the right things, well publicized launch, lots of great reviews from book bloggers, blog tour etc...and then I too lost my top ranking of #1,645, slowly descending to the mid 30,000 to 40,000. The .99 price point seems to be ideal for a newer author, especially one with good reviews. I can always raise it later. Thanks for this post. I considered writing a similar article after I've had time to evaluate the results. I'm sure I will, later this week.
  Jeff Bennington
  Author of Reunion, a supernatural thriller.

  • Hi Jeff, I think you need to update your categories as you are ranking #14 in Books > Health, Mind & Body > Mental Health > Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
    which seems odd considering this is fiction?!
    You can choose 2 categories on the DTP so maybe have a look at the ones you could rank well for, I think this is what got me selling well because Pentecost is a religious word so it started selling in religious fiction. Choosing categories is of course an art!

• Hi. Very interesting post.

  I don't always agree with the 0.99$ price (depends on word count, genre, market, target audience etc.), but regardless my opinion or others' it's a free market and everyone is entitled to put the price or value he/she wants on his/her product.

  And a book is a product. A book is not above any other product, just because it is a book. Any product, good or service, has a long line of planning, designing, marketing, promoting, manufacturing, etc. behind it. Any producer works hard for their products, not only authors.

  A fiction book is a one-time pleasure for the readers (sometimes two or three times, rarely more than that). The reader gets that ROI (return on investment), he/she doesn't have the need for that book again, nor will the reader get anything else in return for purchasing a book. Authors should put the readers first (that includes price), or else he/she will be heading towards failure. Readers are consumers, pay money, and as such they are ruthless. As we all are when buying any product, good or service. Do any of us think about the hard work of the producer when we take a bargain and try to give more money to the producer? No, we think about our money and we're happy to have the bargain. Why should we expect more from the readers/clients? Are authors above everyone else who have a business and sell his/her products?

  Thank you for the great post :)

  • Thanks Irene. I agree -it's critical to remember that a book is a product and it competes with millions of the same type of product. Some people say a book is not a commodity but I think it is because of the speed that people churn through them! If I find a new author that I like I can get through even a substantial backlist in a few weeks, then I move onto the next one. I am acutely aware that for my own writing, people only have one book to read and they can't spend any more money on me! So I definitely need to get my next product out the door!

• I have to agree with your reasoning - for fiction novels. However I feel non-fiction is another matter. The target audience is much smaller and the perceived value is higher. Where people will resist higher prices for purely entertainment reading, they justify the higher cost for something that offers long term value by enhancing their life or income. Still I would not attempt to sell non-fiction in the $5 + range unless I had major name recognition or a best seller.

  • Thanks Allan. I do agree with you on non-fiction although I am also trying an experiment with my non-fiction at 99 cents to see if it makes a difference to sales and ranking. Pentecost outsells the other books by 50x at the moment :)

• Best of luck, Joanna. Just to mention I'm a little worried about the .99 price point undervaluing all the hard work we writers put into our work - we shall see what happens next though!

  I think we should be aiming for a 'fair price', a balance rather than low or high. Perhaps 1.99 to 2.99 for a full length novel...?

  • Hi Adam,
    as briefly mentioned above, you've got to think about the actual income for the book, not per sale.
    John Locke is selling a book every 7 seconds for 99 cents each, so the return is not 99 cents, but thousands - and check out Konrath's numbers. You are not getting 99 cents for your hard work, you need to multiply that by your sales FOREVER! These books never go out of print :)

• I just wanted to add to someone who mentioned that its fiction read 2-3 times max and then not read again as a reason to state the lack of value or fiction, that in that vein you likely agree that artwork is also for entertainment to pretty up a house, a movie is for entertainment, so all movie tickets, paintings, music, anything that is there to entertain should be 99 cents or as cheap as possible- and I don't think it can work that way. Readers are important and the market drives the cost, and if all fiction becomes 99 cents then that is just how it will be, but I wonder about the efforts authors of great works of fiction, and how it might be different if you know you're not going to be making any crack at ever earning a living, or even a supplement to an income that you otherwise would. Art of all sorts, music, drawing, writing, etc etc is of value and the people who do it spend a lot of time perfecting it, and while yes you do it not for the money but for the joy of creating the art, I just wonder how this will change the quality and nature of books going forward. But that's just my opinion and I'm simply sharing another point of view :)

• Great article! It's marketing 101: come in cheaper and better than the competition to take over a niche that is pretty well flush with products. Joanna, you have done just that- a fantastic book at a bargain price. You have done a phenominal job!

  • Thanks Joe - I am aiming to hook people into the series and make the next books even more fantastic. I like to over deliver on the promise to the reader!

• Hi Joanna, You almost had another sale but unfortunately people outside the US are not well-served by Amazon (even though we bought our Kindles from them). The price for your book where I live (South Africa) is $2.99. It's not that this is a HUGE price - even with the exchange rate - it's just that being discriminated against one more time by Amazon sticks in the throat.

  • Hi Stevie,
    I'm not in the US, I'm in Australia and I find the Kindle books are still a lot cheaper than buying books in Oz! What is the best ebook store for you in SA? Do you use Smashwords?

    • Thanks for replying, Joanna. You're so right that it's generally cheaper to buy Kindle books than paper books - even here in SA. It's the whole darned principle of the "one price for us and another for them" that irritates me. I only buy books that are priced the same for everyone - i.e. the recent Patti Smith release, 'Just Kids'. No, I don't use Smashwords - don't even know about it (but I'll make sure I do now!).