How Much is too Much, or too Little?
Back in 2020, as writing my children's book Princess Gabriella and the Never-Ending Kiss wrapped up, the thought occurred to me, "How much should I sell my book for?".
I'd been so focused on the editing, formatting, and illustration side of things, selling my book was only a second thought. With only a few weeks left before the launch, I knew I had to do something, and fast!
While brainstorming ideas on how to price my book, I often reminded myself,
Don't undersell yourself
Don't overprice
Categories are important
Carrying these three concepts with me not only helped build a plan, but ultimately determined my price points to appropriately sell my book to the masses.
The Bookstore
My first stop was the local bookstore. I ran straight to the kids section no matter how tempting it was to check out the latest best sellers in the fiction section.
Meandering the children's book, I grabbed books similar to how I wanted my physical book to look and feel. I knew the external quality of the book was just as important as the internal content. I took note of the range in prices then made my way to the section with books in a similar genre as mine.
I did the same of checking for price ranges. This took about an hour to go through, but I was able to get a price range my book could fall into when it finally came to selling.
As a reward I snuck over to the best seller's section:)
Amazon
Amazon is the largest online book distributor where you can find millions of book at your fingertips. This was my next stop not only because it's the number one website you can find books, but was the same platform I was going to sell my book.
Unlike your regular bookstores, Amazon also sells eBooks and physical copies in many categories. Because the site can hold so much more information, finding books in similar categories or genres is an easy way to see which book are best sellers along with their pricing. This goes for eBooks and physical books too.
This only took about 20 to 30 minutes for me to find a range of prices for my book.
Things to Keep in Mind
Next time you are questioning how much to price your book, just remember there is no wrong or right answer, but you can use the resources around you to help narrow it down. As you do your research keep in mind these ideas when determining pricing.
Content-does your internal content reflect the pricing when compared to other books of the same genre.
Number of Pages- pricing will increase the more pages your book holds. So, find books with similar word count to narrow down your pricing.
Quality of Books-not only should your story be high quality but the pages and cover. The higher the quality the higher you can price your book.
Book of Similar Categories-researching books in similar categories will help pick a price point that the buyer's market will agree with which in turn sells more books.
eBooks and Physical Copies-pricing for eBook and physical copies should be different so if you are deciding to sell both you will have to research pricing for both types of reading material.
Final Thoughts
With all this in mind, I was easily able to price my book accordingly while ensuring I didn't undersell my work or have people pay too much.
Pricing is important especially if you want to be a best seller which was my ultimate goal in the end.
Tell me in the comments below how you strategized pricing your book. Does your price fall on the lower end, higher end, or right in the middle?
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