How to Price Your Book

Authors frequently ask me how much should you charge for an ebook? There are many schools of thought about pricing ebooks. Some marketing experts say to price high and then gradually reduce your price until you find your price point. Others say to start low and gradually raise your price until sales begin to drop off.

Another thing you need to take into consideration is the subject matter and how unique it is. If it is difficult to find books or ebooks with similar subject matter, then you can demand a premium for it -- perhaps double or even triple what you might expect. This is why marketing gurus online can demand and get over $200.00 for a course in ebook format. They are usually packed with hundreds of pages of highly specialized knowledge and experience.

For the average fiction or non-fiction ebook, I recommend going to a real brick and mortar bookstore and find print books in the same genre as yours and the same length. Then average their prices and price your ebook slightly below them. Remember, with services such as EbookoMatic, there are no inventory costs or print on demand expenses, so the money you make on each ebook sale goes straight to your pocket.

Should you round off the price to the nearest dollar -- $5.00 -- or price it a little below -- $4.95? The answer may surprise you. A study was done decades ago by a popular magazine, and they discovered that when the price of the magazine was set to end in 97 cents, the magazine sold like gangbusters. So actually a price such as $4.97 outsells $4.95 or $5.00! I've tested this theory and it works. 

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Steven Schneiderman received his B.A./M.A. In Creative Writing, and taught English at Queens College, The City University of New York in the early 1980's. His previous poetry and non-fiction have appeared in numerous small presses across the country and in American Voices published by Harper & Row, and has won multiple university awards including Versatility in Creative Writing and the Most Promising Poet of the Year (1980 and 1981 respectively) from the City University of New York. Steven currently resides in Tulsa, OK with his wife and two children. He is the creator and founder of EbookoMatic: The Instant Online Ebook Publisher.