Chapter 11
Pricing Your E-Book Effectively
In This Chapter
Determining the best price for your e-book
Understanding how e-book royalties work
Knowing how best to set the price of your e-book on Amazon
One tricky decision you face as an e-book self-publisher is determining how much to charge for your e-book. Unlike a print publisher, you have no manufacturing costs. After your e-book is written, delivering it to a new reader costs virtually nothing, so even if you charge only a few cents, you can still cover your costs.
Authors sometimes charge precisely $0.00 — they give away their work, to help build their reputations and their followings online. At other times, they choose to incorporate their e-books into fully featured digital packages with high price tags — perhaps as much as $100. The price of your e-book probably lies somewhere between these two points.
This chapter explains how e-book pricing works and how e-book retailers take a share of the price. It discusses fiction and nonfiction pricing, and offers clear recommendations so that you’re well positioned to calculate the best price for your e-book. Finally, this chapter describes how Amazon complicates your pricing strategy.