Pricing Your Independently Published Book

[Please note, this post, like every post at The Self-Publishing Coach, was written by a human – me! – Alexandra Amor.]

There’s one very simple element of a good book marketing foundation that many authors ignore or have misunderstandings about. That’s the price for a book.

Pricing matters when it comes to selling books for one main reason: a book’s price should be in line with the price point of others in similar genres.

In a previous post, I talked about meeting reader expectations.

This strategy also applies to pricing

If your potential reader is familiar with the genre they’re searching within, they will have an awareness of what the average price is for books in that genre. If their eyes land on your book and it’s out of line with what that potential reader is used to paying for a book, that’s going to raise a red flag for them.

Prices that are lower than normal aren’t such an issue. All readers are familiar with sales.

But prices that are higher than the reader is used to will create a small moment of confusion in the reader’s mind. That confusion will likely lead to them moving on to considering a different book. 

Most of us aren’t household names

If your name is Stephen King or Margaret Atwood then your publisher can get away with charging almost whatever they want for your book.

Most of us aren’t in that position.

When you’re working on publishing your book do some research about what others in your genre are charging for their books and then price accordingly. Doing this will remove one point of resistance when readers are discovering your work. 

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^{This post, like every post at The Self-Publishing Coach, was written by a human – me! – Alexandra Amor.}