Setting the Right Book Price

You did it! Your manuscript is finished, edited, formatted, and ready for publishing. Now you need to figure out the appropriate price point for your masterpiece. 

‌

Book Pricing

‌Correctly pricing your self-published book can be tricky, especially if you’re an unknown author. You don’t want to price it too low and lose out on profit margin. However, pricing it too high can deter potential readers. 

‌

‌How to Price a Book

There’s no one formula for how to price a book. The path you take to self-publish your book will help you determine the optimal price point to make a profit. 

A few business aspects to take into consideration are:

• Development costs – This includes all of your expenses while you develop the book, such as editors, graphic design artists, author website, copyright register, ISBN code, and marketing services. 
• Publishing costs – These costs include how much you pay to publish on digital platforms, as well as printing costs. 
• Royalties – Each platform you publish your book on will keep a percentage of each sale. You will need to calculate how much you need to earn from each book sale to profit when pricing your book on those sites. Be aware that different sites keep different percentages. 

‌

‌Compare Book Prices

Another tactic to help you determine a book price is by comparing similar titles’ prices. When you’re researching other titles, avoid comparing established or famous authors. These authors already have a large fan base and can set higher prices. 

‌Instead, look for other first-time or new authors. Once you’ve found around 10 other books to compare with yours, begin collecting data about them on multiple sites. 

‌Most won’t show the number of times a book has been purchased. However, you will be able to see how many reviews it has. 

The number of reviews and level of ratings will give you an idea of how successful the book is. You can look at the price for each book and compare the number of reviews to the book prices on multiple sites.

Based on your research, you should charge a similar rate to that of your competition. You might be tempted to charge a much lower price to get more attention. However, undercharging can make your book look inferior to your competition. On the other hand, over-charging to try and make your book seem superior is also a mistake. 

‌

Global Pricing

Finally, publishing your book on the global market allows you to reach billions more people and can help you to be more successful. Many large platforms, such as Amazon, are available around the world and can process various types of currency. 

If you plan to price your book for global purchase, you will want to research affordable prices in other countries. For example, in the USA, $9.99 might not be much for a book, but that’s pretty expensive for a book in China.  

‌For more pricing and marketing tips, contact Palmetto Publishing. Our marketing professionals are here to help.