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Basically, I would like to know what's the optimal price for ebooks published at Amazon (via Kindle Direct Publishing.) By "optimal" I mean the price that is more likely to generate sales.

I'll try to be as specific as I can:

Novel

  • 60,000~70,000 words
  • Literary Fiction
  • Self-made cover

Novella

  • 20,000~25,000 words
  • Literary Fiction
  • Self-made cover

Short Story

  • 9,000~10,000 words
  • Literary Fiction
  • Self-made cover

How much should a new author charge for the cases described above?

(I published a 7K word short story before, and left it as $0.99. But I heard somewhere you should never sell yourself too low?)

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  • It depends a lot on your marketing strategy, and on your particular niche. A common strategy is to price "reasonably" (compare to other, similar books), but on occasion offer a significant price drop (spurring surges of interest).
    – Standback
    Oct 1, 2013 at 9:59

4 Answers 4

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Dean Wesley Smith famously advises against pricing anything at $0.99. That's the discount bin. It tells buyers that it's a cheap read, not that it's a good read.

Why not price your book as if you expected readers to want it?

Here is a bunch of advice from Dean about indie pricing: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?tag=pricing

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Your short story $0.99 - the minimum Amazon will allow. Make sure purchasers know it is a 'short story' or you'll end up with unhappy readers and bad reviews.

Your Novella - $2.99 - That gets you a 70% royalty less a delivery charge. You'll probably get around $2.05 royalty per ebook.

Your novel - $3.99 - At that price you have room to make special 'short term' offers of $2.99.

Note the magic '9'. This won't fool people. They will be aware that $3.99, $2.99 and $0.99 are the same as $4, $3 and $1 but research has shown that that last '9' makes people more likely to buy. For that reason books priced $3.19 sell better than books priced $3.10.

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I was testing out different theories regarding the right price, and I used different strategies for several pen names that I have. There were some variations from time to time, but this is what I found works best https://katherinemilkovich.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/setting-the-price/ I was never into selling my novels for $0.99, because I think it's important to value your own work. And it works for me, I make a lot more money than before.

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    Can you please summarize what's at the link here? We're looking for answers, not just pointers to answers. It's fine to post a summary here and link to a longer explanation elsewhere, but we're looking for that core nugget of answer. Thanks!
    – Monica Cellio
    Aug 15, 2016 at 18:36
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I don't see many people paying even $0.99 for a single short story. There are many very good novels for $5 or less. More than people have time to read. OTOH, a collection of good short stories can be better than a novel. But maybe I'm cheap. I don't understand why anyone would pay $1 for a single song off an album. Yet lots of people do.

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