What To Price Your Book?

It's difficult to know how to price an ebook. If you're an independent publisher, that is.

The print publishers charge the same for an ebook as they do for a paperback or hardback. Which in my view is ridiculous. Most of the cost of producing a print book is not the printing - it's the storage at a warehouse. And the cost incurred when a publisher orders a box from storage to be sent to them via a truck haulage company.

Yes, the publisher has to make a profit and the author has to make a profit in royalties.

But an ebook - sure there might be a fee incurred to take the files of a print book and convert it to a digital file... but there's no printing, no shipping...

An ebook should cost no more than 2/3rds what a print book costs.

But what if the book is available only as an ebook? And put out by an independent publisher?

Well..if you charge even $5.99, no one will buy it. Well..I say that, I suppose it depends on the subject matter. If it's something rated X they probably would...

But, most people only want to spend $1.99 or $2.99 on a book.

A book that you've spent months writing, and which you think is pretty good. Pretty damn disappointing.

Well, that's where your website comes in, with a sample chapter and a blog and so on. Something to let readers not only know that your book exists but also that it's good. Because most people think an independently published book is by its nature not very good - poor writing, poor proof reading and poor editing.

That's why you've got to pay a professional to have your book proof=read and edited, and if your editor suggests changes, make them.