Why I’m Pricing My Books at Just $0.99 USD
A Marketing-Averse Author’s Approach to Book Pricing
With inflation being what it is right now, many authors have raised their prices. I, on the other hand, am dropping mine. I’m pricing my books at $0.99 USD. Here’s why.
Understanding the Market and My Pricing Strategy
There’s a lot of discussion in the romance writing community and beyond about how much you should charge for your books. “$1.99 is a dead price.” “Price them too low and people will believe they’re junk.” But one of the best pieces of advice I ever received wasn’t to do with selling books at all, but just in general. Right now, I don’t even know where that piece of advice came from, or where it originated from, but it went along the lines of: You should charge what the market will bear.
This is just one reason I’m pricing my books at $0.99 USD. Do my books sell at the higher prices? Yes, they do. But ask me how many I sell. Not enough to make a living as an author.
The Psychology Behind Free vs. Paid Books
I can’t go lower than $0.99 unless I make them free, but selling them for free doesn’t appeal to me. I’ve realized that I only read the free books I was already interested in buying; whenever I found one I wanted and saw it was free, I thought, ‘Score, it’s free right now!’ The rest of the free books I downloaded, even if they sounded great, mostly went unread.
This realization about my own reading habits has taught me something important. Like many people, I tend to download free books that sound interesting based on their description, but often, they just sit in the bowels of my Kindle, E-reader, or phone, forgotten and never read. Perhaps it’s the perceived value or the lack of commitment when a book is free. I’ve noticed that I’m more likely to read a book, even one or two that I wasn’t initially sure about, if I’ve paid for it.
The Exception: Success with Shorter, Free Books
There is one exception. Shorter books that are free actually do remarkably well in terms of being downloaded and read. People looking for a quick free read seem more inclined to read them. When I made my 15,000-word book free, it fell under Amazon’s ‘2-hour reads’ category. I got thousands and thousands of downloads, and a lot of reads and ratings, during the few months it was free. Try as I might, however, I have not been able to recreate this ‘success’ for my other books, the longer contemporary romances. How do I know it’s not because they’re crap? Well, they’re rated well by people who do purchase them.
Okay, so what I am doing here then is reducing the barrier to entry and charging what the market will bear. I hate marketing, and hate social media even more, which sucks for me because I have to find ways outside of TikTok (BookTok), Facebook, and Instagram to really sell my books. My strategy? I try to have one free book and have the rest at $0.99 USD.
Learning from Reader Feedback and Reviews
I really noticed this strategy worked when I was selling ‘Let Me Be the One,’ which was priced at $3.99 USD when it came out in December 2022. I also let it run in Kindle Unlimited for three months and received reviews on Goodreads, which were less than stellar. Newsflash, not everyone loves a ‘manwhore.’ I do, and I wrote the story back in 2014, when ‘manwhores’ were still loved in fiction. Nearly a decade later, tastes have changed, and many are put off by this character and his potential spread of STIs.
The bad reviews didn’t bother me too much because they weren’t criticizing my writing; they were basing their ratings on their opinions of my characters. Ben Armstrong, the main male character, was one of the loudest characters I’ve ever worked with. As for my main female character, Lainey, they felt she was a pushover. I didn’t believe so. She grew in my mind and forgave when it was healthier to do so, instead of holding onto her hatred and resentment. If that made her a pushover, then that spoke toward the reader’s values. I loved this book, but the people reading it at this time did not.
While the reviews didn’t bother me, they were off-putting to some who weren’t overly keen to try a new-to-them author. So, I dropped my price to $0.99 USD, and it started selling significantly better than all my other books. People who didn’t mind the reviews, or were even encouraged to read the book because of the reviews, were more willing to take the plunge. Less than a dollar. In a world where prices for everything continue to skyrocket, there’s something refreshing about finding a book that sounds interesting at an affordable price.
The Impact of Price on Reader Perception and Sales
Another bonus of the lower pricing strategy is that people generally have lower expectations. They’re not expecting a bestseller, so when they enjoy the book, it feels like a big win for them — a book they enjoyed and didn’t have to pay a fortune for. Moreover, that book then serves as a reason for people to buy my back catalogue, liking the book so much they take a chance on my other books, which were priced higher at the time, because they’d read one and liked it.
Balancing Price, Value, and Readership
I hear a lot of people pricing their books high because of all the work they put in, because the book is worth it in their opinion. For those who have created something just for the fun of it, that’s fine, but for authors or people attempting to make a living from writing, there is no point in publishing and having no one read your book. There just isn’t.
I’d rather someone take a chance and read my book than pass it over because they’re afraid to part with their money. I’m not a new author but I’m an unknown author because of my hatred of marketing.
If you’ve published a book and it isn’t selling, and you want people to read it, ask yourself, do you care more about pricing it as what it should be or what people will buy? If it’s the latter, it’s time to drop your prices and let people get to know you. After all, the prices don’t have to stay low forever, do they?
