Hank Quense Establishing Your Book Price

Hank Quese Establishing your book price
If you are looking to publish your first book you’ll have to answer this question: How do you come up with a price for the book? I’ll answer that in a moment. First, a few words of advice. Don’t let your ego get in the way of making a rational decision on this subject. It’s true you may have spent years producing this masterpiece and you think the book’s value is enormous and that thousands of readers will be happy to pay a premium price to get a chance to own their very own copy. Well, you’re wrong. You are an unknown author and unknown authors can’t command premium prices. It’ll be hard enough selling your book without the added burden of an unrealistically high price.
Back to the question on how to come up with the price. The answer is research. Let’s consider print books first. The best place to do this research is on Amazon or some other major book site, although you can do this in a book store or even a library. Once on the site, search for books that are similar to yours. If your book is non-fiction and covers plumbing repairs, search for other plumbing repair books. Note the price for the ones that have similar subject matter and a similar number of pages. That is the target price of your book. If your research reveals four similar print books and their prices range from $15.99 to $24.99, your book should be priced somewhere within that range. You can also make a pricing decision to make your book available at a lower price if you wish.
If your book is fiction, search for other books within your genre. This may be a tougher job than with the non-fiction books. Genre books have superstar authors who command premium prices. Ignore them. You don’t have the clout to demand a premium price — yet. Your search should be for lesser known authors in your genre. If your book has three-hundred pages, you should search for other similar genre books with three-hundred pages, approximately. Comparing your three-hundred page book to a six-hundred page one isn’t very productive. The six-hundred page print book will cost more to produce because of the larger number of pages and subsequent production costs, so that book will require a higher price than a three-hundred page print book. Set your price to get the best possible sales at your current status as a new author.
For an ebook, the search process is similar but you’ll probably come up with a confusing array of data. A bit of explanation is in order. There is a debate going on about ebook pricing. Many voices claim that ebooks sell best if they’re priced at $0.99. Others contend that a higher price yields more profits but fewer sales. There are studies that conclude the sweet spot for an ebook is $2.99 to $5.99. Obviously, an ebook selling for $2.99 will bring in more revenue for an author that an ebook selling at $0.99. On the other hand, an ebook selling for $.99 could sell more books than a higher priced ebook. You can ask for advice on web sites like LinkedIn and you’ll get replies, many of them contradictory. After reading the replies, it still comes down to you making a decision. Make sure this is a business decision.
Another complicating factor is the presence of best-selling authors. Their ebooks come from the major publishing houses. Their price will be closer to $10.00 or even higher. It will not even be close to $.99. Here again, the premium price is due to name recognition and clout. If you price your ebook close to $10.00 you won’t have to worry about tracking sales; you won’t get any. A first-time self-published author simply can’t expect to use premium pricing and sell any books, no matter how great the content is.
Here is my pricing strategy. For my novels, I start out at $3.99 for ebook and $19.99 for print. As the book ages, I’ll drop the ebook price lower.
For non-fiction, I initially price a multi-topic ebook at $4.49. Some of my non-fiction books are dedicated to a smaller topic and I price them at $2.99.
Remember to suppress your ego and make a business decision on this important topic
~ ~~
Hank Quense Author
Read about using KEYWORDS from his book on The Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website.
This article was taken from my material in my new book, How to Self-publish and Market a Book.

Here is the book blurb:
Are you considering self-publishing your first book? Naturally, you have questions and concerns. This book has your answers. It integrates both the publishing and the marketing to provide you with a complete project plan to market your book while you publish it.
The book is available at:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Zbrx54
Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/2Y2rewE
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/949789
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2ltLzbU
And other online booksellers
My Review


About Hank Quense
Hank Quense writes humorous and satiric sci-fi and fantasy stories. He also writes and lectures about fiction writing and self-publishing. He has published 19 books and 50 short stories along with dozens of articles. He often lectures on fiction writing and publishing and has a series of guides covering the basics on each subject. He and his wife Pat usually vacation in another galaxy or parallel universe. They also time travel occasionally when Hank is searching for new story ideas.
Links? You want links? Here you go:
Hank’s website: http://hankquense.org/wp
Hank’s Facebook fiction page: https://www.facebook.com/StrangeWorldsOnline?ref=hl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/hanque99
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanque/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hankquense/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3002079.Hank_Quense
Great advice! Average ebooks range from 2.99 to 4.99. Another factor is that authors can only get the 70% royalty at certain price levels. All of that has to be factored in.
Quite true, Vanessa
This looks great, June. Thanks for publishing it.