Question on Pricing

Hi, Suz.  Welcome.

99 cents or not?  Both!

If you go back in the archives, I've railed against the 99 cent price point.  I don't love it and think it devalues our work.  However, given the worldwide struggling economy, those of us not writing in sizzling hot genres may need to be more flexible than other writers.  I would rather see fiddling with the price than putting the work on Kindle Select.  Hold off on that till you run out of other options.

Yeah, wow.  Big statement since some are enjoying so much success.  I'm still not prepared to say what I'm thinking at the moment but I'll go some of the way.  To first base.  What heat rating is that??

If you're relatively new to writing as a career, what's your catalog like?  What's your library?  Do you have 1 book, 3, 5?  Which projects are you most attached to/what do you value most?  What projects do you want to protect, if any?  Are these stand-alones or is it a series? One imagines that if you have a series, introducing readers to the first number will get them to read the following books.  That's a different strategy than if you have a single book.

Ignoring length, what is the price of a middle reader book?  A YA?  A romance?  A mystery?  A police procedural?  A literary work?  Are they the same or different?  Why?  What's the profile of the audience for each of these?  Who has money?  What kind of money?  Do they have to ask for permission to buy a book?  Is it an impulse purchase or something considered?

We don't really know the answers to these questions without a focus group or Amazon getting generous with their research, but can try to intuit some kind of information by knowing who we're writing for.  What I think might be quite different than what someone else thinks about this.  They may feel this is a stupid discussion to be having, a real yawning waste of time.

So play around with the price of one book.  If you have a couple books, do it with the one you care about least.  If it's a series, play around with #1.  You should know in a week or two if customers accept or reject the price you set.  Readers will find you.  I wish Amazon would tell us our page views but I suspect we never will get that info.

That's what I'm prepared to say at the moment.  I hope it helps and am always glad to try to answer questions.