How Do You Set Your Prices?

Wish I could help you here Gretchen. Hubby wrote a non-published children's book, we looked into publishing, but... I honestly wish you the best of luck and hope many people buy your book. I would buy it but am presently pennyless.

Can't say as I don't write to publish, but am very interested in the subject. Good information here for those who do.

I set my price for T'ain't Nobody's Businessat $14.50. I am paying my cover designer $1.00 a book, which is really very little, but it means I make only a small amount per book, too. However, CreateSpace actually turns out to be cheaper than Lulu as far as cost per book, by quite a bit. That's a good thing, because I had to set the retail price for Ghost to Coast $2 higher than I wanted to just so I could make $2 a book. And I was told by a major publisher that most authors with big publishers only get $1 a book, which is why they write under different names so they can publish more books.

I think it's wise to keep prices down as much as possible. So many people will buy used books if the price is too high.

It's hard to compete with free, as in content on the web, but a book is tactile, a thing with weight.

Think of pricing in another way, the average salary in the Twin Cities is $42,000, therefore $19.99 is almost an hour wage. What else is a derivative of an hour or a half hour wage....CD's? DVD's, a couple tickets at the cinema?

Ah Greg, wouldn't that be nice? I figure with the royalty I'm allowing myself, and the time I've spent writing, revising, editing, etc for me to make a "salary" on the book comparable to the time I put in I would have to sell 20,000 books. I'm still at the point where 20 would make me pretty happy, but I'll keep trying.

As a reader, I think very little of spending $14 or about an hour of my "real job" wages for a good book -- or even twice that on a hardcover if the author has managed to impress me.

I am like you, and publish through Lulu. I tend to use their pricing calculator and create a balance between profit and affordability.

I don´t know about this much, Gretchen. I know my mother adjusted the price on her novel, THE ROTTEN APPLE GANG, at least three times since she self-published.

I'm not in a position to know.

There is a wonderful resource called Amazon for figuring out how to price a book. Go to "bestsellers" and click through to your genre - fiction, business, travel, etc. and start looking through the pricing of those 100 top sellers - you will begin to see a trend - look at page count, when it was published and who the author is (known or unknown, credentialed or uncredentailed). The price of your book really has nothing to do with production costs, royalties, discounts or commissions - in order to produce a book that will sell, you have to start with the proper MARKET pricing and work backwards. You can tell pretty quickly whether a book will be profitable given the necessary price point in the market segment.

Hope that helps.

Carol White
www.roadtripdream.com – 888 522 TRIP
National Spokesperson - Recreation Vehicle Industry Assn. (RVIA)
A Member of IBPA, SPAN, NWABP, NSA & Travel Publishers Assn. (TPA)
Author, Publisher, Speaker, & Marketing Coach
Awards: 2006 Ben Franklin-Marketing; 2004 ForeWord-Travel-Finalist

Oh - I should have added, don't look at the discounted Amazon price, look at the publisher's list price. You have no control over how Amazon prices a book, but that's a whole other conversation!

Carol

good topic!