I saw this on another forum. I can't vouch for his conclusions, but maybe some here who have self-published can chime in. https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2018/01/the-price-is-right-6-secrets-to-pricing-your-ebook/
The only thing I'd add to that is that you have to be realistic ... its nice to be in the 2.99 to 9.99 bracket for 70% royalty on amazon, but if your book doesnt warrant 2.99 (or if a lot of its direct competitors are lower) you may have to accept that you need to price at .99 or whatever and get the 35% royalty. Also amazon won't let you set the price to free, so if you want a perma free giveaway you have to set your amazon price to .99, set the book free on kobo and ibooks and wait for amazon to price match
There is a lot of good advice in that article, and I was not aware of the pricing tool in KDP, will check that out later. I just experienced the elasticity effect. Last November I lowered the price of The Eagle and the Dragon eBook from $3.99 (at 35% royalty, don't know why I did that!) to $0.99, so I could participate in an Asian Speculative Fiction promotion, and advertised the promotion. I was stunned at the explosion in sales, which continued long after that promotion ended (just a few days, though the site is still up). I kept it low for Christmas and advertised the low price, and sales just kept on coming. After Christmas, I raised the price back to $2.99 (at 70% finally) and sales have continue to chug along at the same rate. With any luck, I may actually make more than I spend on advertising, though not much. That will make @BayView happy!
OT Lew but have you put it out for sale in india and china ? (india is the largest English language market after the US , China is smaller but still circa 10 million readers) .... Amazon has an india outlet but for China you need to use kobo According to what I've read India is a volume market the going rate for an e book is the rupee equivalent of 43 pence (35% royalty) so you only get 15 pence a book but it can still add up if it takes off in a market of 125 million readers
I haven't heard of anybody putting their book to the Indian Amazon. Is there a setting for that which people are just ignoring? Or, is it that the Indian readers are just not buying self-published books from non-Indian writers? I'm just scratching my head over this It sounds like a really easy market to conquer otherwise.
Amazon india (.in) is relatively new (like in the last six months) but it should come up in the dashboard I'd guess ( I use draft to digital as an aggregator so I'm not sure what it looks like if you upload to amazon direct) Kobo has an india site too As I alluded to above the main issue western writers face is direct translation of pricing - if you let amazon chose for you it will put it over at the rupee equivalent of what you've priced at in dollars ($2.99 = 191 rupees ) and it will be far too expensive to sell , when the going rate for an ebook is in the region of 43 rupees I havent bothered with china ( I though Lew might want to as his book is about romans in ancient china) but I'd imagine the same probably applies to the yuan as one dollar is currently 6.45 Yuan
Right now, I am Kindle select, so Kobo is off the table for me. I have sold books in India, Brazil, S. Korea, as well as several European countries. My biggest non-US market is the UK, about 1/3 of my sales, then Australia, with Canada starting to come on fast. I have a friend who is president of Bryant College, and one of his professors is trying to put me in contact with some in Gansu, preferably Zhelaizhai, formerly Liqian, where my Latin-Chinese translators came from. They are very proud of their (historically controversial) Roman ancestry, put on legion parades in the provincial capital, probably to attract tourists. And grape wine viticulture started within 30 miles of Liqian in 35BC, when the Roman soldiers were supposedly resettled there. Perhaps I could get a tax-deductible trip to China out of this? Better yet, get them to pay my way. I am, after all, publicizing their tourist attraction.
And I used the KDP pricing tool, and it appears that $2.99 and 70% is spot on for me. Thanks, @BayView!
@Lew, if you can remember or look, how many positive reviews did you receive during the 99 cent drop?
Three five-star reviews with good write-ups, 2 in November and 1 in December. Total of 20 so on the US amazon, 8 more on the UK Amazon, 1 in Canada. Lowest is a three, by someone who didn't believe the historical accuracy, but found it a good read despite the "swashbuckling pirates, steamy sex scenes and not believable royal personages."