Posting Point
In recent years, the debate about the price of e-books in an online bookstore in Pakistan has intensified. What is the quality ratio? How much is the user willing to pay? What should the government and the courts do to correct the situation? All of this can create confusion and drive authors crazy.
While the courts, online stores, and traditional publishing organizations continue to argue and fight, what can an independent author do? No one has all the solutions, but a little unconventional wisdom, a little experimentation with pricing, and a little institutional know-how will enable you to decide on the right price for you. Understand that there is no best price for every e-book; what is a great price for one e-book may not be appropriate for another e-book.
Here are some questions to keep in mind when pricing your e-book
How much is your e-book worth?
Before you set a price, you need to determine the price of the book in an online bookstore in Pakistan. Have you written a quick erotic novel to compete with the millions of erotic novels available that took a month or much less to write? Then the cost is probably quite low because it may no longer be in extremely high demand. In the case of writing an advisory article on a topic on which no book has yet been published, its value may be very high even if the readership is small. Did you spend ten years writing and researching your e-book or did you write it in a week? Can your readers easily access the information in your e-book elsewhere?
I once told an author that a 100-page vinyl e-book was too expensive, and he replied, “Have you seen what my e-book, which I spent five years writing and working on, is worth?” It is obvious that the value of his e-book is high, but his readers may not remember that it is worth much when they see a slim volume that does not take much time to leaf through. Remember, too, the price of your reader’s time. Is it worth paying $9.99 for something that your reader can peruse for an hour? Perhaps the time is more valuable to your reader than money, so he or she might not be willing to pay $9.99 for what he or she would perceive as ten hours of work to review your book, but might pay $2.99.
If you insist that the value of your book in an online bookstore in Pakistan deserves a better price, you are right, but you will have to convince your reader of this price through advertising efforts.
What is the highest and lowest price you can set for your book?
Although some large publishers may charge higher prices to bestselling authors, for most people the limit is $9.99 because Amazon has set the limit for better royalty payments at $9.99. Books priced between $2.9 and $9.99 receive a 70 percent royalty from Amazon, while e-books priced above 35 percent receive lower royalties, meaning that your $15 e-book will only earn you about $5 instead of $7 for a $9.9 book.
How many e-books do you want to sell?
In case the price of your e-book in an online bookstore in Pakistan is $0.9, you may need to sell ten e-books to break even, even if the price is $9.99. A lower price may also make your book so attractive that you sell ten times as many e-books as you would have sold if you had kept the price at $9.99. If you can sell ten e-books at $0.99, isn’t that better for you because now ten readers are more likely to check out your fateful e-books, so you can charge them more?
Where do your readers buy their e-books?
I doubt that many sellers take the time to estimate what your e-book in an online bookstore in Pakistan is being sold for in the different online stores, but you will probably have to be honest in asking the same price everywhere. Just because your e-book is on Amazon does not mean your readers will buy it, so be sure to promote it in a few places: Barnes & Noble, Kobo (a store in Canada), and Google. Play (where you will find people with Android phones and pills). Whether you are selling to a 20-year-old who is likely to save money on Google Play or an older person who prefers to keep the book on Amazon, make sure your book is in all places and at all prices. Your 20- to 12-month-old is a college student with little money, so $0.99 is a higher price for him, but most e-book sellers will want you to do the same promotion in all their stores.
Can you decide to publish your book as a series or promote it chapter by chapter?
Serialized novels have been around for centuries, and lately, more and more authors are turning to offering e-books as chapters or short sections. If you’ve written a short e-book of about fifty pages that works as a stand-alone work, charge a small price for it, say $1.90, and keep the series at the same price or a little more. A reader is much more likely to buy four e-books at that lower price if they like the first book in an online bookstore in Pakistan, than to buy one e-book at $7.96 if they are no longer sure they will find it interesting, and earn $7.96 if they end up buying all four.
How good are you at promoting your e-book?
Whether you bid a lot or a little, just because you wrote an e-book and turned it doesn’t mean everyone will look at it. Yes, a person might stumble across an internet bookstore and buy it, but if you make a real effort to sell it, you might sell more e-books. If you can advertise your book really well, you can sell it as valuable and entertaining, so it may get a better rating because of its perceived value and higher interest. If you don’t spend a lot of time promoting, you won’t pay too much, so lower prices can help make up for the lack of promotional effort.
