# Wondering About Going Wide? Tips and Tricks and $9.99 Pricing



## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Good morning!

I have followed the KU Page read/Page Flip/Algorithm? changes thread intently and full disclosure, I am part of a boxed set that is in KU (wanted to see how the program is performing, to say I am underwhelmed is putting it lightly).

My books have been wide since February 2015, after I tried KU 1.0 for six months when it first came out.

If you are planning to go wide here are some things you can expect:

*Every little thing adds up.*

When you go wide, I highly recommend you start a spreadsheet that you fill in daily or a few times a week with what you're earning on all vendors. I have 13 or 14 books right now and MOST months, my other vendors all added up account for 15-20% of my earnings. In a release month, Amazon actually takes a bigger share of the earnings, but I am working on that by starting preorders on all vendors in 2017. I haven't put out a proper release since April 2016 (I had a minor character novella go out in August with no real launch, just clicked the button), and my August earnings for example were $3500 total, $850 of that not Amazon.

If I look at my other vendor earnings across the last six months, it is a steady $800-$1200 a month. Compared to Amazon, which fluctuates from a high of $12,000 in May to a low of $2200 in September, in my opinion that is another benefit of being wide. Amazon fortunes come and go, but when you put systems in place to cultivate an audience on other vendors, you have a steadiness of earnings to use as a baseline. I personally keep my business operating expenses 50% or less of my other than Amazon vendors just in case I ever lose Amazon.

*It takes some time to figure out how the other vendors work*

I would highly recommend signing up as a reader on all major vendors you will sell on and downloading some free books so YOU get an idea of how the shopping experience is on each. For example, keyword phrases still really bring up books on BarnesandNoble. If someone starts typing "pride and prejudice va" to put in variations, 3 of my titles are in the autocomplete. The competition is lower on other vendors, as is the overall ebook marketshare audience, but your personal earnings are a micro economic factor, while overall ebook market audience is a macro issue. GooglePlus may have less than 10% of the overall ebook market share, but that's still more than enough readers to make up more than 10% of your earnings if you optimize for that vendor. (Since posting my stories on Fanfiction.net my google earnings are over $200 a month for the last 3 months, I have found I sell more internationally on Google compared to like Amazon's ratio of US readers to foreign markets. With Google, I have sold books in Malaysia. Seriously. MALAYSIA  )

You need to be familiar with HOW a reader shops on those vendors, just as well-versed as the knowledge base is for Amazon. For example, KOBO has almost a continuous coupon code going that applies to the whole store. I point that out to my readers ALL THE TIME. Favorite book not on sale? There's a 30% coupon code, you can use it on my books or any other in the store! Etc. Google has this wicked cool feature where I can add a person's email address in my dashboard and POOF, my book is in their Google Play app! Yeah! They can read it online, and if I remove the email address? POOF! It's gone. That's pretty slick, if you ask me. Apple has a program for exclusive preorders. And preorders on other vendors count twice for sales ranking, once when it sells and again as a massive dump when the book goes live. That is the program I am looking to leverage the most in 2017. If I do a 99 cent boxed set, it will be all of MY books 

*You can't be Amazon-centric*

Sharing a book link? Share a link to a page with all of your buy buttons. If you're just sharing Amazon links on social media and in your newsletters guess where you're going to sell? Amazon. That's A-OK when you are exclusive to Amazon, but if you're trying to make it on other vendors you're going to need to share links elsewhere just as much. If you have a sizeable catalog (I'd say 5 or more books) contact support. Reach out to authors who are already wide. They can tip you off to who to talk to about getting promotion on various vendors. Kobo for example is famously inclusive for indies and when you publish through writinglife you have access to those promotions right up top. I am accepted to those promotions about 20% of the times I apply, but that's a lot better than the 0% of time Amazon has asked me to join in any promotions. 

*More publisher, a little less author.*

So our dream publisher would give us an advance, have a killer marketing plan, and awesome layouts for ebook and paperback, right? Be that publisher for yourself. Invest in ISBNs, these are the primary identification for the other vendors. Get print books out there. Research and find the tools you can afford to use. I use Adobe Creative Suite and Vellum and Scrivener. Vellum and Scrivener was a one time $240, Adobe Creative is $80 a month for me because I keep stock on there too. Yeah, $80 is 10% of my other than Amazon earnings, funny that.  (not really, by design). And this is not going to be popular but this is personal experience talking: GIVE YOURSELF MERCH SPACE. What do I mean by that? No one cares when a $2.99 book goes to $.99. And most readers do not comparison shop, if you make a book $4.99 on Kobo and $2.99 on Amazon, no one will ever know. Amazon sends out spiders to undercut, but Nook, Kobo, and Apple do not. Google will, if you can get into Google. Now, when you are 99 cents from $4.99 it's a much bigger deal. Or, you know. BE $4.99 on Amazon, too.

*No one gets to have it ALL no matter what system they choose.*

I am never going to be an All-Star making 5-figures or 6-figures in a month. And there is nothing wrong with people aspiring to BE that, but the very nature of that program requires someone to fall off the mountain for another to take the spot. I HAVE made 5-figures in a month being wide with my JAFF multiple months now, so far in release months, but I have repeated it which is a huge PHEW for me .I watched my little empire grow to that, slow and steady, release by release.

I don't get to write full-time, I write part-time. Since 2014, my JAFF books have grossed $95k (on Amazon alone, including other vendors it's over $120k now) and I figured out that out of 26 months, I only worked 19. Only 11 were months where I was anything resembling disciplined (writing most days of the week).

From the very beginning even when I was in KU for 6 months, I created my own lead capture systems which were pretty darn simple: blog chapters at the bottom of the chapter had a CTA to join a mailing list or buy a preorder. That was it. I posted chapters as I wrote, took them down when I had to for exclusivity. Now I keep them up as much as I can. _To Capture Mr. Darcy_ is still up on Fanfiction in its rough draft state, book has sold $15k worth of books on Amazon alone at the $9.99 price point. I don't share that to brag, just presenting an alternate reality than what is mostly talked about here and in other communities of the page reads + royalties systems.

I have a lot on my plate still homeschooling my special needs daughter and moving all the time plus an older child who is a junior in high school and starting the launching process.  I have days of dark woe when I sit and try to compare myself to All Stars and most of them are super kind and wonderful authors. Many are my friends. But I have accepted that their path is not for me, and vice versa. And that is okay.

I have bought Facebook ads and Google Adwords Express to drive traffic to blogged chapters to great success. Readers seem to like getting put right into a "Chapter 1" experience vs landing right on a buy page, and I have buy buttons at the bottom, so if they want it after Chapter 1 they can grab it, if they want it after Chapter 4 they can wait until then. If they walk away, they were probably not my reader to begin with, and that's okay. It's okay as a publisher to work to a reality that is not every reader will want my book.

I have heard many times only JAFF can sell at $9.99. And maybe that is true. Though Joe Nobody's books seem to be doing really well as well, and I know there are others here that are anonymous who price high, but never talk about it. * I can tell you that at no point did someone come tell me I COULD price at $9.99.* So the idea that someone is or isn't big enough to price at $9.99? Not true. No one gets the nod, they decide to nod themselves. I started with a $8.24 price point in December 2014 on a preorder. A preorder is a safe way to test a higher price point, granted your mileage may vary if you've already TRAINED your readers to expect a certain price window from you, maybe try a boxed set of books? You start getting a few preorders at the higher price point and suddenly your confidence boosts! What if you don't? Well, that's probably an indication you need to troubleshoot your listing or ask your readers why they aren't preordering. I talk with my readers all the time, and realized that if I put a lower price on a book, I can't ever get a "tip" from them if they were willing to support my business with more. But I can ALWAYS reduce the price down over time to a level others can support my story service. 

And my first $9.99 boxed set didn't sell as many copies as the first novel I priced at that. And that first novel at $9.99 didn't sell as well as the latest novel I have priced at $9.99. And for the record, I do run sales and readers gobble those up, too. So just having a regular price point of $9.99 doesn't mean I can't run a 99 cent week. I have never heard from a reader either that they were mad they bought the book at $4.99 or $9.99 and then found out it was on sale later. I'm sure some may have been upset, but it's really not my job to give them my books at the lowest price possible when everyone already gets them free.  This is a very different model than what most publisher use, it just happens to be a model that has worked for me.

I just wanted to reach out and offer a friendly face and helpful hand if other authors are wondering what else is possible? I had to really hunt to find models of publishing that I wanted to emulate and I co-opted them to my strengths. That's the real secret I think to anyone's success. If someone figures out regular releasing brings them the most sales, then that's what they leverage. I did that for a time, then couldn't sustain that, and had to regroup. I put together systems like a catalog page that's linked at the back of every book and has links to all of my author pages on various vendors so I never have to update files. I just update a single web page (which I haven't in a while and am in the process of redesigning anyway). But that catalog page I wrote about here over a year ago gets over 600 people a month visiting it and over 1,000 clicks. I don't do a thing to make that happen, it's just what has organically grown from the books out there in circulation. I've done free runs (2 on A Winter Wrong, both times reach top 100 in the Kindle Store), and like most, I just keep at it, a little at a time. I love data because it's the thing that allows me to do the seemingly dangerous/weird things like high price points and not get distracted by anecdotal accounts (which all of the above is MY anecdotal account, so really and truly take time to map out paths that are best for YOU, everything I do may not be the best fit for you).

Sorry for the long post. I should be writing fiction, but I wanted to share in case it helps another out there. None of us are alone. HUGS.


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## Sarah Shaw (Feb 14, 2015)

Interesting strategy. So you price all your books at $9.99? I guess I'd be scared to try that, since I am only willing in a very few cases to pay that much myself. But I take your point about setting expectations and that you can always discount later.


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## Arthur Slade (Jan 20, 2011)

Thanks for this. Very helpful since I am about to go wide with a new launch. And the 9.99 is especially interesting. I was listening to an interview with Mark Lefevre of Kobo where he pointed out that their readers are often older and have more income so aren't as interested in .99 reads as they are in getting value for their money. So he suggests that they are more likely to pay more for a book than one would expect. Obviously your experience seems to reflect that.


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## T E Scott Writer (Jul 27, 2016)

Fascinating story with lots of useful info, thank you


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## S.R. (May 19, 2016)

Thanks so much for taking the time to write all of this up - lots of great and insightful information! I'm just a week away from taking my 3 book series wide, so perfect timing for me. 

I sure wish I could get into Google Play! Hopefully someday...


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Great post, Elizabeth. Definitely some food for thought, there.

98% of my books are wide, though I've just unticked the auto-reenrol box for the two books currently in KU.

I definitely sell much better on channels other than Amazon, though I do have a habit of pointing to Amazon when I do remember to market.

One question I have - you say you add a page at the back of your books which have links to your author pages on various sites. How have you managed to do this without upsetting, say, Apple, who don't like books to point to rival companies?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Nanny Ogg said:


> Great post, Elizabeth. Definitely some food for thought, there.
> 
> 98% of my books are wide, though I've just unticked the auto-reenrol box for the two books currently in KU.
> 
> ...


You are allowed to link to your website. So I do. http://www.elizabethannwest.com/roseroom/catalog.html

This is OVERDUE for a change, my new version will be up this quarter and 100% responsive. I made this one in Adobe Muse and my new site will be too.


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## B.A. Spangler (Jan 25, 2012)

Interesting strategy. Considering wide again and bookmarked.
Thank you for taking the time to post.


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> You are allowed to link to your website. So I do. http://www.elizabethannwest.com/roseroom/catalog.html
> 
> This is OVERDUE for a change, my new version will be up this quarter and 100% responsive. I made this one in Adobe Muse and my new site will be too.


Ooh, that is a great idea! May do something similar for my own website.


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## Kessie Carroll (Jan 15, 2014)

Thanks for the pep talk! I've got my less-market targeted books wide, but I was going to keep my target market books in KU--until this debacle. I don't want to build my empire on a shaky, fickle algorithm. So I've been taking a cursory look at Kobo's listing for paranormal romance. Compared to Amazon, they've got a fat lot of nothing. It's very obviously the genre dregs and outliers, because the big money has been in KU. It's got me wondering if this is an underserved market. I mean, my clean shifter romances sold halfway decently on iBooks, and nobody likes them because they're clean. If I could get some good stuff wide, and leverage the promos, I think those markets are an untapped gold mine.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

When I was a book marketer I learned first hand that readers either want the book or don't want the book, in which case a price inducement must be given. But if a reader needs a price inducement to buy your book, is that really the FIRST audience you want to go after? I'm not saying some readers are more valuable than others, I am saying it takes all types of readers to support a stable career. A good publisher works to meet the needs of readers at all levels.

You need those super fans who love you at any price. All of us have an author that is in that category. An author who we hear they have a new book on preorder at the bookstore we are saying "Shut up! Take our money!" In the past, that's almost always a trad pub author that's a household name. But the Internet has been a great equalizer. Maybe indies aren't household names, yet, but all of us have people who love the books we write. This isn't about putting readers down, or thinking we're better than another author. It's about business margins. I can sell a LOT less books and stay in business for the readers who love my work at a higher price point to start than I can chasing mass audience appeal at a bargain price that my book may never grab that level of appeal. And then what? If I can only sell 500 copies of a title, then by golly, those 500 copies need to "earn out."

And even though all of my titles have sold over 1,000 copies each (the most sold belongs to The Trouble with Horses, my oldest book, at 5,000 copies on Amazon), I work plans to sell 500 copies in the first 30 days. That's it. Whatever the earning point is that book selling 500 copies at the price point I set that's the earn out. Originally, I wanted 500 copies sold in 6 months. 

The reason it's helpful to have a sales goal is then you have a benchmark for efforts. Did you do a blog tour on one book? How many units moved? Did you do a Facebook ad? How many units moved? It can be difficult to try to judge advertising efforts in a direct fashion because advertising/marketing takes layering. Yes, direct link clicks and things are valuable metrics, but they don't tell the whole story. You NEVER know when someone saw your blog post, saw your Facebook ad and just typed it into Amazon or Nook or Google. And trust me, many people do not trust links and type stuff in, it's one of the safest way to avoid phishing and spyware. 

It's OKAY to not make the sales goal. It's okay to fail. It's okay to go "well, that didn't work, what can I learn from it?" For example, my latest novella. It did not sell 500 books in one month, but I also did not do a thing to market it. I think I emailed my mailing list and it's on fanfiction, too, but I was on travel at the time and dealing with personal life stuff my energy wasn't there for that book. It's a GREAT little story, I don't regret writing it. But what did I learn? I learned that the bonus novellas are better off as a bonus in one of the boxed sets. I learned that when I do another minor character novella, it needs some launch love. For a brief spell, and this is normal, too, I think, I panicked that my time in the sun was over. No one loved my books anymore.

Then I started posting my latest book on Fanfiction and chapters were getting 1,000 visitors within 2 hours of posting. It is the most read story in the fastest time of ANY of the titles I have put on Fanfiction. I put an invitation in Chapter 7 for readers to join a private Facebook group (Fanfiction is not ideal for communication back and forth with readers) and over 100 joined within 48 hours. 

So maybe if you are new as a publisher, you start with a goal to sell 100. How will you do that? Don't rely on a vendor to do the heavy lifting for you, after all in a correct world, they are making less than you per sale. Take it on your shoulders to move your book and trust me, the algorithms at Amazon notice that and help you along. And the other vendors notice too. 

You can do it! I know you can.


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

Thanks, Elizabeth! I've been planning for 2017 to go wide, possibly from the start with new books. It seems KU isn't working for me. I think I'm going to start pricing higher as well. Maybe not to 9.99, but who knows? I might just try it and see how it goes.

I think a lot of us try something, and if it doesn't work we think _we're_ a failure, when in fact it was the technique that didn't perform as expected. Being indie means we can tweak, toss and start over. Yay us!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I have learned in the last 48 hours that apparently the whole $9.99 price is still a surprising thing  . . .  even though I've been doing it since my boxed set of Seasons in April 2015.  

All I can say to those who wonder about it, my first books were novellas and I sold them for $3.25, $4.99, and $2.99. My first novel in the new genre, Jane Austen Fan Fiction, I priced at $8.24, hubby's b'day ($3.25 is MY birthday, for a year that crazy pricing worked, I moved to .99 ending because it's the required pricing on Apple, and the suggested pricing on Kobo and required pricing there for promotions). I reduced the price of novel 1 to $6.99 when book 2 came out at $8.99. Book 3 released this year at $9.99.

YES, I have had a few bad reviews on some of the books regarding pricing. But like I said, I do not let that trouble me one bit. My books are always free in rough form when they are in progress. And the readers who follow me as I write are really the only opinions I care about because if a reader is coming at my library of books and bad mouthing it over the price, that is not my reader. They can grab it when/if it goes on sale, when it's being written, by joining my private Facebook group to get the files or buy my bundle of 8 books for $25, which is about $3 per book. And to be honest, I think sticking to a higher price point makes my books more desirable. 

My return rate is not high. 7 books were returned last month out of 680 sales on all of amazon international, 5 of them being US, 4 of them being the $2.99 new release. So... as far as I can see, it's a system that works for me.

I did LOOK and make sure there were books in my genre (historical fiction) selling for $9.99. Thanks to trad pub, there are MANY genres where $9.99 and $14.99 are in the top 100, yes EVEN romance.  In fact, To Capture Mr. Darcy was in Regency Romance, a very competitive market, and thanks to the price, sat for 2 weeks on the front page of the Pop List.  There are pros and cons to pricing high, but so far the pros outweigh the cons for me because I have a much larger system in play: free works in progress, low-cost bundle on Gumroad, yearly discounting, and a readership that anticipates my releases so that I have enough first week buyers to hit high on my Hot New Release lists and Bestseller lists in my category. 

At any rate, I have dearly appreciated all of the emails, PMs on Facebook about this post. I'm happy it helped some. Good luck to everyone, no matter what paths you choose.


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## TheLemontree (Sep 12, 2015)

Thanks EAW, I love your posts about your strategies.

It is so wonderful to hear of a well planned and successful approach that is different to the others. There really is more than one way to skin this cat.

Wide is part of my long term strategy and I'm definitely taking notes about having the book (or parts of it) free online, linking WELL to all vendors, and knowing how those vendors work. 

I'm a totally prawny prawn, and moving so slowly because I am only using book income for book expenses, but prawny steps will get me there. 

Right. Off to add 'buy a few books from other vendors' to my to do list 

Best of luck to you for 2017, too.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

I just raised my prices from $3.99 to $4.99 everywhere except Amazon (still too chicken for that!). 

I write longer historical romance novels (80-100k). Most indies in my genre charge that much for 40k works. I'm going to give it a shot at the higher price point, even though a lot of folks say they won't pay more than $3.99 for "unknown authors" (non-trad??). I have a new series coming out that I will price at $3.99 until it is complete. It's an experiment.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

$4.99 vs $6.99.
A $3.50 vs $4.90 pay out. So ten readers. One author makes $35 the other $49. The $49 author can lose 3 readers out of ten to make even money with the $35 author. Is it 30% that walk away over $2? 

As to the known factor, certain elements work in your favor. I think when you have just one or two titles, yes, you look unknown. But by the time you have dozens of reviews, five or six or more titles, you have social proof. You have evidence people have bought you and liked it. That's all a new to you reader needs to know after wanting your book. Again, this is for full price readers. It's a different demographic than someone looking to maximize reading material for dollar spent. That is another large demographic, but if you can't get the volume there, you may just be a niche author and there are plenty of niche readers who pay a slight premium for good stories in their genre of choice.


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## Victoria Wright (Oct 9, 2015)

Thanks for sharing, Elizabeth. Pricing at $9.99, you must have lady-balls of steel. Impressive!


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

I wouldn't pay $9.99 for a kindle book, even from someone like James Patterson and i have bought many of his books.

$4.99 is my cut off for digital books. Anything above that would require them to be very very well known, so that i know i am getting it from a publishing house that has put out a well edited book. Unfortunately indie books still remain poorly edited and so i would be taking a big chance paying more than $4.99.

I usually only go for books that are around $2.99 to $3.99

$4.99 for my favorites

Nothing above that.


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## Matt.Banks (May 5, 2016)

I've read indie books that were very well edited, and I've read traditionally published books that had multiple errors. If it's a writer you "trust", whether indie or not, I could see wanting to purchase their book no matter if it's 3, 4 or 10 bucks. One of the benefits of indie publishing is the flexibility, so if a certain price point results in low sales, it can always be adjusted. But I don't think there's anything wrong with a writer "valuing" their work or wanting to maximize their profits.

Thank you Elizabeth for sharing your experience!


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## Scout (Jun 2, 2014)

A lot of value here. Thanks! You are incredibly inspiring. All the best!


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## writer-artist-mom (Feb 21, 2015)

First off: Elizabeth, THANK YOU for this thread! Even for those of us not trying to emulate your method of success, it still gives me hope that I can do it too, in my own way.

A couple questions: how often do you post on fanfiction.net? Does that mean you write every scene of each book in order? I'm not sure if I could do that - when I get bored/stuck I jump ahead in the timeline and then go back to earlier chapters later. If you do write in order, you probably have an outline, correct? Are readers ever disappointed if the published, edited version is quite a bit different than a rough, meandering first draft?

Not sure if you or anyone else can answer this, but I'm thinking out loud. Your books are able to go on a site like fanfiction.net because of Jane Austen themes, but for other books that aren't taking inspiration from a public domain work, I wonder if posting rough drafts on fictionpress or wattpad would yield similar results? Last I checked, fanfiction.net doesn't accept purely original stories. I suppose the effort/time it takes to get discovered on sites like those would be similar to spending your time on other marketing methods, as just another way of introducing more readers to your work.


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

Really interesting post, thanks for posting. I'd like to prove my books higher, as they're all pretty long and I feel a higher price looks more "natural" than a lower price, however, I worry that the jump from a perma-free to a book at say $7.99 would put a lot of people off. I would actually like to do away with perma frees altogether, but every time I put them back to paid my sales flatline.

Also, I love the idea of a single link to a catalogue page. Regularly updating links in the back of all my books is a real pain.


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## Viv Phoenix (Dec 19, 2015)

I'm happy to find your report, love the long post. I thrive on details. 

Great timing. Your pricing strategies are especially heartening. I just launched a novel wide. It's at 99 cents because that's the price strongly advised for most of the few promos available for a new release without reviews. Mystified how anyone makes much money at that price point. Even though I included links to other retailers in my promos, the sales outside of Amazon are sad. 

It was affirming to see someone doing as well as you are strategizing over the ever-present concern of possibly losing the Amazon account. The process of suspension and banning of accounts has kept me motivated to go wide even though it seems like another huge time-intensive trip to add to my already task-filled life. Given all that you're managing, with raising children as well, it must be possible. 

I'm happy to know you're seeing stable results from other stores. Thanks for organizing your post so well as to the methods you use to build your readership outside of Amazon. I won't feel really secure until I have more income from multiple sources. I've had too many setbacks with Amazon already, so I have to make going wide work. 

I've saved many of your posts. Thank you for all you contribute here. I'm glad your books are doing so well! 

BTW, I sell 3.99, 4.99 and 9.99 books on another pen name. I was pleased to see one of the 3.99 ones that I didn't renew in KU is making more on Amazon than a similar book still in KU. I've set everything not to renew. My launch has been slow, and I've been hoping it wasn't a mistake to go wide with a new release. It was great to find your post tonight.


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## LoriCook (Oct 9, 2012)

Thanks so much or your post!
One question:

"Google has this wicked cool feature where I can add a person's email address in my dashboard and POOF, my book is in their Google Play app! Yeah! They can read it online, and if I remove the email address? POOF! It's gone. That's pretty slick, if you ask me."

I can't find this function. Can you help!?
Lori


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

You're talking about pricing box sets at $9.99. I sort of assumed that was normal.

I have a five novella collection (technically an anthology, not a boxed set, because bookbub wants it that way) priced there. Every individual novella is priced at $2.99, so $9.99 represents a savings of 1/3 of the cost of buying them individually. People buy it, bookbub promo'ed it, and I never heard a complaint.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

lostones said:


> I wouldn't pay $9.99 for a kindle book, even from someone like James Patterson and i have bought many of his books.


I definitely respect that some people have lower thresholds for their purchases. But,like I buy books at $14.99 and $9.99 at least a few times a month. Last $14.99 I bought was Belgravia, devoured that in a single afternoon, didn't mind the $15 price tag at all. It would cost me more for a movie ticket, this I can reread anytime I want to, and the movie played in my head. A bargain, for me. 



Eliza Marie Jones said:


> First off: Elizabeth, THANK YOU for this thread! Even for those of us not trying to emulate your method of success, it still gives me hope that I can do it too, in my own way.
> 
> A couple questions: how often do you post on fanfiction.net? Does that mean you write every scene of each book in order? I'm not sure if I could do that - when I get bored/stuck I jump ahead in the timeline and then go back to earlier chapters later. If you do write in order, you probably have an outline, correct? Are readers ever disappointed if the published, edited version is quite a bit different than a rough, meandering first draft?


I am sporadic in my posting on Fanfiction.net but I am trying to get more routine. I just did 2 chapters yesterday afternoon and those chapters have already been read by over 2,000 people worldwide. I didn't start off with Fanfiction to share my chapters. In the beginning I started with Wordpress and a few closed BBC forums like Kboards, only they are private to JAFF. Then, after KU came out, I devised a way to put a few chapters public and then I used a plugin so that certain content could ONLY be seen by those logged in, thus growing a mailing list since Wordpress also collected email addresses for me and would send out an alert of a new chapter being posted automatically for those readers who selected that. Then I tried using Adobe Muse, but I got bogged down with multiple layouts, then I moved to a fully responsive Wordpress custom template which is my site today, but I am redesigning my system as we speak. Once i have it down, that will be a separate post.

As to writing out of order, I do generally write in order, I will write later scenes if they come to me, but yes I outline with permission for characters to deviate, and they DO. I have written more in sequence the more and more I write. That might be something that naturally happens to authors, or maybe not. But I also dictate, so even if I did write out of order, I could share chapters once the story was completely done and as each chapter went through edits.

HTH



Viv Phoenix said:


> It was affirming to see someone doing as well as you are strategizing over the ever-present concern of possibly losing the Amazon account. ... Given all that you're managing, with raising children as well, it must be possible.
> 
> BTW, I sell 3.99, 4.99 and 9.99 books on another pen name. I was pleased to see one of the 3.99 ones that I didn't renew in KU is making more on Amazon than a similar book still in KU. I've set everything not to renew. My launch has been slow, and I've been hoping it wasn't a mistake to go wide with a new release. It was great to find your post tonight.


I have always had a 5 year and 10 year plan in my head. Amazon's creator has many great business quotes, the biggest being about other people's margins and making sure your business is about the customer. My customer is a reader. Not necessarily an Amazon reader. The Internet isn't going away, it will only become more and more grafted to our everyday lives, so I made it very important to stay adaptable. In 5 years we may be selling our books chapter by chapter. I can do that.  Etc. etc. As to raising children too, it IS hard, but I use dictation, robots, and work smarter not harder every chance I get. I also make sure IF push came to shove, I can DIY every step, so I am very knowledgeable with HTML 5, WYSIWYG website development, multiple ways to format ebooks, I make my own covers, and even editing which I do have others help with, I COULD use techniques to self-edit and have done that before to keep costs low.

As to advertising, I used to be a book marketer. To tell you the truth, the massive promote your books for free and 99 cents haven't done the industry any favors. They are an important TOOL to use, but they can't be the ONLY tool. I have promoted full price stand alone novels at $9.99 with Google Adwords Express and FacebookAds. you don't have to discount. You can, that's one way, but check out some business books on marketing some great ones in KU funnily enough. Many teach how to plan your message and pitch and call to action. Has nothing to do with price, that's just one type of Act Now.



LoriCook said:


> Thanks so much or your post!
> One question:
> 
> "Google has this wicked cool feature where I can add a person's email address in my dashboard and POOF, my book is in their Google Play app! Yeah! They can read it online, and if I remove the email address? POOF! It's gone. That's pretty slick, if you ask me."
> ...


Go into your Google Publisher Dashboard and go like you will edit a book. On the Content tab up top you can add quality reviewers.  Add your email address and you will see how it works. Even sends an email "hey, this book is available to you."



GeneDoucette said:


> You're talking about pricing box sets at $9.99. I sort of assumed that was normal.
> 
> I have a five novella collection (technically an anthology, not a boxed set, because bookbub wants it that way) priced there. Every individual novella is priced at $2.99, so $9.99 represents a savings of 1/3 of the cost of buying them individually. People buy it, bookbub promo'ed it, and I never heard a complaint.


I started my foray into $9.99 with a boxed set, but before that I had a novel selling at $8.24. Since then I have released and sold over 1,000 copies of 2 more books in that series at $8.99 and $9.99 and a stand alone has sold nearly 3,000 copies at $9.99 that released in April. My novellas release for $2.99 to $4.99 in price point.

Okay, now I'm getting some coffee and brunch my wonderful hubby has made. Bacon. YUM!


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## Sara Whitford (Aug 18, 2015)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> As to raising children too, it IS hard, but I use dictation, robots, and work smarter not harder every chance I get.


I have enjoyed every single bit of this thread! Curious... what do you use for dictation? Also, do you mostly use dictation to just get the ideas down and then fill in later? Or do you make sure you get in punctuation, etc., when you are dictating?

This is something I'd really like to be able to do, but as of yet, have struggled to make it work.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Sara Whitford said:


> I have enjoyed every single bit of this thread! Curious... what do you use for dictation? Also, do you mostly use dictation to just get the ideas down and then fill in later? Or do you make sure you get in punctuation, etc., when you are dictating?
> 
> This is something I'd really like to be able to do, but as of yet, have struggled to make it work.


The Epic dragon thread . . . http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,203713.msg2841317.html#msg2841317


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## Nathan Elliott (May 29, 2012)

Thanks for sharing all of this, Elizabeth Ann!  Glad to see this is working out for you.


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## MissingAlaska (Apr 28, 2014)

I always enjoy reading your posts - and this is one of the best.  Thanks for taking the time to share.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> As to raising children too, it IS hard, but I use dictation, *robots*, and work smarter not harder every chance I get.


Heck with the dictation, what type of *robots* do you have, and where did you get them!


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## Guest (Oct 9, 2016)

Dawg, Liz, you're so deep and so darn smart. Gonna have to carve out some time and dissect your words with a magnifying glass and diagram your sentences. I like the way you think! Working smarter, not harder. Common sense marketing, reasonable expectations. Thanks for the info!


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## My Dog&#039;s Servant (Jun 2, 2013)

Thanks, Elizabeth, and congratulations on your growing success.  Gotta be tough with a military move lifestyle and home  schooled child, so my hat's off to you for making it all work, anyway!


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## ChrisWard (Mar 10, 2012)

lostones said:


> I wouldn't pay $9.99 for a kindle book, even from someone like James Patterson and i have bought many of his books.
> 
> $4.99 is my cut off for digital books. Anything above that would require them to be very very well known, so that i know i am getting it from a publishing house that has put out a well edited book. Unfortunately indie books still remain poorly edited and so i would be taking a big chance paying more than $4.99.
> 
> ...


I think the last five books I read were in the $8 - $10 range. I rarely read indies and trads are more expensive. I don't like going above $10 but for me it's all about how much I want to read the book. I'd rather pay $10 for a book I really want than $5 for a poorer alternative. Saying that, I only read about one book a month. If I read a lot more I'd have to consider pricing much more. Or, you know, go to a library haha.


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## Anna Drake (Sep 22, 2014)

Elizabeth, thanks for your wisdom. I'm planning to take one of my series wide. So your post is especially welcome to me.

You mention letting people read along while you write. How do you do that? It's my understanding that once something is on the web, it never leaves.


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## jaglionpress (Oct 5, 2016)

Thank you for sharing, Elizabeth. A lot of interesting stuff to chew on.

I can confirm that promoting wide can help even the prawniest of prawns: my first novel went live on Amazon with a $0.99 pricetag on October 4, but it took a day or two to go live at the other major vendors (I was using Draft2Digital). I thought about booking a Sweet Free Books slot, then noticed on the booking form that they had a place for a Nook link, so I waited, very impatiently, for the novel to go live on the Nook store, then booked the first available slot on SFB (Oct 8 ) using both links. Result: 3 sales from Amazon and 2 from Nook, but due to the different royalty levels at both stores I should get slightly more money apparently from Nook than I will Amazon (if I'm doing the math correctly, which possibly I am not). I won't see a profit on this ad (I did it mostly to get a feel for the process), but making sure to add Nook means that I will be chalking $4.77 up to experience, instead of  $5.95.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Cherise said:


> Heck with the dictation, what type of *robots* do you have, and where did you get them!


LOL. Robots to me are the automatic stuff I have going on software-wise. Grammarly is a robotic editor. I use that terminology to remind myself there are limitations. I dream of own a Roomba, though. I try to devise all of my systems of publishing to be automatic, if someone reads a book of mine, where do they go next? What's presented to them next? etc.



Princess Charming said:


> Dawg, Liz, you're so deep and so darn smart. Gonna have to carve out some time and dissect your words with a magnifying glass and diagram your sentences. I like the way you think! Working smarter, not harder. Common sense marketing, reasonable expectations. Thanks for the info!


If you like some of my philosophies on publishing, I highly recommend my thread How many Readers Can Your Serve? When I started thinking like that, the whole world of publishing really changed for me. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,207260.msg2886038.html#msg2886038

If you can take how much you want to make in revenue, divide it by the books in your catalog, divide that by 30 days in a month, you have an idea of what kind of traffic, advertising, and marketing work you need to do. For example, if I want to make $100,000 in a year on my books, my entire library of books is worth $42 in royalties if someone buys it all. I need to sell the equivalent of 2380 sets per year, or 198 sets per month. I have to work to bring 200 NEW readers to my catalog of book each month. It's not the only way to figure it out, it's just one way to think about the daily interest you need. If I need 200 new readers to buy everything for example in a month, then I need to attract MORE than 200 new readers to my brand. Now I can develop and explore ways to do that...(publishing more, advertising, etc)



My Dog's Servant said:


> Thanks, Elizabeth, and congratulations on your growing success. Gotta be tough with a military move lifestyle and home schooled child, so my hat's off to you for making it all work, anyway!


If I pause to think about it, it freaks me out. So I just keep moving forward so I don't rest on my laurels.



Anna Drake said:


> You mention letting people read along while you write. How do you do that? It's my understanding that once something is on the web, it never leaves.


#1 what does that matter? even if I post it on my blog, the second I WRITE it I own the copyright to that material, so posting it live somewhere doesn't erase that UNLESS I sign something to give up my copyright. #2 indexed pages are often archived, but non-indexed pages are not. Those would be pages behind a login, pages on Fanfiction.net are not crawled in the content area, just the metadata area. If I am speaking another language, don't panic.  The way the web works is there are what's called spider or bots that crawl the web, they are programs that are scanning the HTML and categorizing it. It can still make mistakes, like 3 years ago if I googled my name, some results in the top 20 were me, others were other stuff. Now if I search my name, I am the top 16 results. WOOHOO.

All websites can set up files that TELL the robots and spiders what to crawl and what to skip. Also, robots and spiders don't have log in credentials. There's a ton of other tools also that can be used to protect information on the web, but for my purposes I don't worry about it. I tell my readers they get the ROUGH draft free on purpose so if it's ever stolen, I know exactly where the theft occurred vs the published version. But if you've ever sold your ebook, anyone could steal your IP from you and try to publish it again. DRM is a snap to break, and the file inside is just raw HTML.



jaglionpress said:


> Thank you for sharing, Elizabeth. A lot of interesting stuff to chew on.
> 
> I can confirm that promoting wide can help even the prawniest of prawns: my first novel went live on Amazon with a $0.99 pricetag on October 4, but it took a day or two to go live at the other major vendors (I was using Draft2Digital). I thought about booking a Sweet Free Books slot, then noticed on the booking form that they had a place for a Nook link, so I waited, very impatiently, for the novel to go live on the Nook store, then booked the first available slot on SFB (Oct 8 ) using both links. Result: 3 sales from Amazon and 2 from Nook, but due to the different royalty levels at both stores I should get slightly more money apparently from Nook than I will Amazon (if I'm doing the math correctly, which possibly I am not). I won't see a profit on this ad (I did it mostly to get a feel for the process), but making sure to add Nook means that I will be chalking $4.77 up to experience, instead of $5.95.


We all start with a first 5 sales. That's awesome that you are experimenting affordably and getting a feel for the process. If you want any help or feedback on your marketing ideas, feel free to PM and I will do what I can to share what I know, and you can take it or leave it.  Keep celebrating every single milestone and victory, you're going to marvel at how far you've come in just a few short months.


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## katrina46 (May 23, 2014)

SallyRose said:


> Thanks so much for taking the time to write all of this up - lots of great and insightful information! I'm just a week away from taking my 3 book series wide, so perfect timing for me.
> 
> I sure wish I could get into Google Play! Hopefully someday...


You can use streetlib. They recently changed the payment system to every month, so it's not bad. I was making 300 a month through them at one point before I pulled a bunch of stuff for KU. it was a mistake. I'm putting it all back up as fast as possible.


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## Hope (Nov 28, 2014)

If someone wanted to gradually go wide-which vendor would you suggest, to begin with and why?  Thanks!


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## shunterni (May 2, 2016)

Thank you for this thread. I think you hit spot on the nose something that's been nagging me--my books are niche, they've always been niche, so how am I supposed to survive on 99cent earnings? Or with a permafree? I can't. As I discovered in a recent free run, I can't do that. Sure, I can give away tons of my book, but my sell-through was higher--and not in percentage, in literal numbers--when my book was $2.99.

So following your posting this thread the other day, I put my book back to $2.99, and I'm planning to send an email to my list telling them my book is going up in price, and you know what? I'm curious to see what happens. Because hey, if I'm going to make no money with a free book, I may as well make no money with a $3.99 book   My readers seem to be the type who prefer to buy, and I'm cool with that.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

shunterni said:


> Thank you for this thread. I think you hit spot on the nose something that's been nagging me--my books are niche, they've always been niche, so how am I supposed to survive on 99cent earnings? Or with a permafree? I can't. As I discovered in a recent free run, I can't do that. Sure, I can give away tons of my book, but my sell-through was higher--and not in percentage, in literal numbers--when my book was $2.99.
> 
> So following your posting this thread the other day, I put my book back to $2.99, and I'm planning to send an email to my list telling them my book is going up in price, and you know what? I'm curious to see what happens. Because hey, if I'm going to make no money with a free book, I may as well make no money with a $3.99 book  My readers seem to be the type who prefer to buy, and I'm cool with that.


After increasing my prices from $3.99 to $4.99, I've seen no drop in sales (even on Amazon) these first few days. Maybe I'm niche, too 
I still have book 1 in my series as permafree, though.


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## Small Town Writer (Jun 11, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> You are allowed to link to your website. So I do. http://www.elizabethannwest.com/roseroom/catalog.html
> 
> This is OVERDUE for a change, my new version will be up this quarter and 100% responsive. I made this one in Adobe Muse and my new site will be too.


THIS is what I needed! I've been meaning to create a catalog landing page on my website for a while now and couldn't figure out the best way to do it without a million clicks for the reader. Thanks for sharing your journey! You definitely make me want to raise my prices.


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## Stephanie R (Apr 16, 2015)

I think there's definitely an upper limit to pricing. I bought an ebook this weekend for $11.99 and I almost couldn't bring myself to do it. It had gotten excellent reviews though and gone from an indie pubbed to a Penguin imprint published book, so I made the leap. It was the first time in years I've plowed through a whole book in one weekend, so it was worth it, but I certainly wouldn't pay that much all the time! $4.99 or $5.99 is the most I pay without thinking twice!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

I really wasn't advocating for everyone to just raise their prices.  Please, please remember that I custom crafted my whole publishing empire around this concept. I did experiment with free and 99 cents as well, I wasn't happy with what my data showed me, and that is why I am more confident in what I'm doing now.

I am about to re-release my novella series as short novels, putting them at 99 cents in preorder mode on the other vendors . . . again, this is a custom decision to my catalog, my readers, and my goals. For me, those books have already more than earned out the work we put into them (we because I have a business partner who helps me with editing and operations, but I write). So to take the first 5 books of a 16 planned series, make them temporarily 99 cents on the re-release so that all books in the series can be 40-45k, add in a few bonus scenes and timelines and casts of characters, it's just free advertising for me. I am giving my readers the benefit of a $1 book for a book they already bought before, hopefully attract new readers into the series, and then they will go back to $4.99. 

I never feel pained about any blowback I get because I make sure anyone CAN read for free. Not everyone has to do that, I do it for myself because I crave the applause as I write (readers are so awesome when chapters are going up free), and it keeps me motivated to FINISH. That's a construct *I* needed. 

So no matter who you are, what you write, what you publish, what you really want to do is sit down and formulate the marketing and publishing plan that makes sense for YOU. It's even fair to ask yourself how much you want to make and when so you can craft a plan for that goal. It also serves as a beacon of sense when you start publishing and seeing trends like how many books you typically sell with your current marketing efforts, maybe test a pen name series with same efforts but a higher price, see if price was even ever a factor. 

People buy books for many reasons. Sometimes the price of it comes into play. Sometimes people just need the right book at the right time and if it's $9.99 or less, they're going to grab it. Remember that before you were ever in indie publishing how did YOU buy books when you went to Borders or BN or BAM or Walden or your local bookstore?


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## jcalloway (Jan 10, 2014)

Great post, Elizabeth. A lot of good thoughts here. Thank you.



Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Then, after KU came out, I devised a way to put a few chapters public and then I used a plugin so that certain content could ONLY be seen by those logged in, thus growing a mailing list since Wordpress also collected email addresses for me and would send out an alert of a new chapter being posted automatically for those readers who selected that.


Would you mind sharing the name of the plugin and how you use it, exactly? I'm intrigued.


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## shunterni (May 2, 2016)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I really wasn't advocating for everyone to just raise their prices.  Please, please remember that I custom crafted my whole publishing empire around this concept. I did experiment with free and 99 cents as well, I wasn't happy with what my data showed me, and that is why I am more confident in what I'm doing now.


Don't worry--this has been a long time in coming for me. I spent the summer attempting first perma-99 cents and then free, but neither gave me numbers I was happy with. While I still plan on having the occasional 99 cent sale, what you said highlights something I've been ruminating in the back of my mind for a while now. I figured out probably about, oh, a month after I published my book that I'd made a specialty piece that is the equivalent of a novelty ice-cream flavor for most people, and so while plenty are willing to try, few want a whole bowl. Which isn't what I hoped, but those who keep going are really into it and those who stop don't seem to be offended, just say "not my thing" for the most part. And so I've been wondering what to do with a series that isn't bad, just doesn't have mass appeal. Your strategy dovetailed with that nicely. Plus, it was just nice to see that someone who writes niche is doing just fine. It's not the narrative I've seen much of. What you are doing took a lot of thoughts I'd been having and glued them down a bit to make a picture.


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## PhilipColgate (Feb 11, 2016)

I'm 100% sold on your premium pricing strategy and will use it for the launch of my new hardboiled mystery and noir crime fiction pen (also going wide).

I'm writing in precisely the genre I like to read. It's sort of a niche genre, but it has a rabid readership. I know because I'm one of them. I've read hundreds of reviews and blogposts by readers and see they are a lot a like me. So, naturally, I looked at my own behaviors in buying ebooks. I've purchased dozens of books at $6.99+ even from "unknown" authors because the cover, title, and blurb tell me I'm going to get the reading experience that is harder to find--it fits the noir nice. I've even paid close to $20 for a bundle of classic books by one of my favorite authors. The traditionally published Hard Case Crime series is the type of stuff I write and their ebooks are $6.99-$7.99. 

With my other pens, I've been testing 99 cents and free for a year and I'm now convinced those readers are simply bargain hunters. I've moved hundreds of units for free gotten less than 5 customer reviews. Also, I see on Goodreads that readers have my books marked as "to-be-read" a year after they downloaded them free. No offense, but these aren't the readers I want. Instead of 10 bargain readers buying at 99 cents, I'd rather one premium-purchasing reader buy at $6.99 because s/he will be enthusiastic to read my book and become one of those 100 true fans that the Self-Publishing Podcast guys talk about.

Big disclaimer: I have a good day job. I don't NEED to make tons of money here. Is it my fantasy to write full time? Of course, but I'm only 37 and wouldn't mind slowly building my publishing business until I can go full-time at 40 or 42. By then, I can have 20+ books in my backlist. As Elizabeth notes, then you don't appear so "unknown" or risky.

I'll report my results here ... just have to actually finish that first $6.99 book.


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## Contrarian (Oct 12, 2016)

Elizabeth Ann, I think you're probably right about higher prices.

Two questions for you:

First, how do you decide on price? I price by length because a longer book takes longer to write. 

Second, how do you keep new people buying? After the first push, my sales drop like a stone. I don'yest think putting chapters of my WIP online would work for me because I don't write in sequence.

I write historical romantic comedy set in the Regency, and my books may incorporate paranormal, fantasy or science fiction. Also, except in one case, I don't write sex. I note this in the description.

Like others here, I, too, have come to the conclusion that those who want cheap books are bargain hunters--as if number of words is the only determinant of what is a good book. ("Death of a Salesman" is only 24 pages.) But I'm so tired of getting one or two star reviews of my well-written, well-formatted books that say "Too short! Not worth the money!".  I would rather that kind of person see my higher price, decide it's too high for them and go elsewhere. I also put the word length into the book description, not that it does much good.

My sales are pathetic, and they have been ever since my first title with a small press came out in 2009. I'm so far in the hole now, I'll never break even on my fixed expenses, never mind my labor, unless something changes. Nothing I've done has ever helped my sales much, and, with 10 titles out (4 small press, 6 indie), I'm pretty tired of making pennies and having to smooze on Facebook. I HATE Facebook.

I put my books in Romance->Historical->Regency, which is very crowded, and may not be the right one. I'm going to try different categories and keywords.

My upcoming book is long--120,000 words. I'm going to price it at $7.99, put it into a historical fiction category rather than romance, and see what happens.


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## jaglionpress (Oct 5, 2016)

Thank you for your kind offer, Elizabeth...when I get my thoughts in order on this "fire aim ready" launch of mine, I will take you up on it.


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## FFJ (Feb 8, 2016)

Thanks Elizabeth Ann and everyone else who contributed (and will add) to this thread.
Lots of food for thought.

Bookmarked.


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## Ron Tucker (Jul 16, 2012)

Thanks very much!

I'm still new and figuring it all out, so this is valuable information.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

lostones said:


> I wouldn't pay $9.99 for a kindle book, even from someone like James Patterson and i have bought many of his books.
> 
> $4.99 is my cut off for digital books. Anything above that would require them to be very very well known, so that i know i am getting it from a publishing house that has put out a well edited book. Unfortunately indie books still remain poorly edited and so i would be taking a big chance paying more than $4.99.
> 
> ...


But would you pay $9.99 for a 3 book boxed set when the individual books are $4.99 each?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

jcalloway said:


> Would you mind sharing the name of the plugin and how you use it, exactly? I'm intrigued.


To be honest, that plugin is probably defunct. What you will want to look for is any wordpress plugin, paid or otherwise, that let's you hide content in a post to only logged in user. There's also paid options, many about $99 a year. When you consider that Wordpress EMAILS chapters or posts you write to the people signing up to be your member, it can also be a low cost way to run a mailing list since you can have as many members as you want. 



shunterni said:


> Don't worry--this has been a long time in coming for me. I spent the summer attempting first perma-99 cents and then free, but neither gave me numbers I was happy with.


That's really the key. Experiment. Test your limits. Test your methods etc.  Just that when you do that, don't be afraid to also test higher price points. Here are some myths I learned were just not true when I changed my prices:

#1 Readers who have already bought your book are not going to know if you raise or lower the price in general. You don't have to worry about who *JUST* bought your book before you do a price change, when they clicked the button to buy they were satisfied with the exchange or they would not have clicked the button.

#2 No one will tell you it's time to raise or lower prices. You really have to have the gumption to test that yourself.

#3 There is a stratified, self-selecting, layer at certain price points. $4.99 is one, there are readers who LOOK for books at that specific price point in their preferred genre as an indication the books at that price point will be worth their time and money. $6.99 is another price point. And finally, $9.99. The reason $9.99 attracts the eye is because readers assume a $9.99 is trad pub. Some will go look at the publisher listing, but for the most part, if the book is charting on an Amazon genre bestseller list, has a couple of reviews and has a $9.99 price point, the assumption is that book is worth it.

#4 Reviews that complain about the price do not turn other readers off, they just expose the reviewer. Think about it, if you're shopping for something and some says "The book was good, but I wouldn't pay $9.99 for it!" you're thinking, "well the price wasn't a secret. and you said the book was good."

There are always some exceptions to these myths. There are readers who follow our careers, but they won't be negative. There are strangers to our brand who will look at a 1-star review on a $9.99 book and walk away, but that person probably was never going to be your reader.

The biggest thing that resonated with me is that readers cannot leave us a tip. If a reader gets your book for $2.99 or $3.99 and believes it to be as good or better than the higher priced books in the genre, they can't add $1 or $2 to the price. But, by cycling through prices like a regular retail cycle: introductory pricing (if you want, I don't generally do this), regular price, sales price, clearance price, with promotion of each price point, you're going to capture each reader at the price point he or she is comfortable paying. Like I will buy a James Scott Bell book on writing or plotting all day long at $9.99 or $14.99, heck, even $19.99. Won't even blink. Others, not as familiar with JSB, or not as much of a fan, might wishlist it and wait for a sale, snag it when it's $6.99 or $4.99. And others still will wait a year or more for the book to be clearance priced 99 cents or $2.99. This is the retail cycle customers are used to. When you jump the gun and start going clearance, then regular price, no sales price, no clearance all helter skelter, they get confused.



LindaBanche said:


> Elizabeth Ann, I think you're probably right about higher prices.
> 
> Two questions for you:
> 
> ...


If you are pricing by word length, aren't you reinforcing what the readers are doing, that quality is based on length? I have always shied away from pricing by word count and instead I price by story. My Seasons novellas for example, are more than just D&E so I know there will be slightly less appeal to them for the mass audience so they are lower priced for the word count compared to Moralities series. For example Book 5 of Seasons is 40k long at $4.99, Book 2 of Marriage is 45k and has always been $8.99 and up. Why the difference and it's only 5,000 words?

Well, Book 5 of Seasons is a different kind of reading experience . . . it's the intro to a new year, ends on a cliffie, and is very like riding a mild amusement park ride. It's dramatic, but you enjoy reading it until the very end when it takes your breath away. Book 2 of Moralities is a very powerful narrative that includes domestic abuse. If it was any longer, I would wear out my reader. It needed to be shorter than the 65k Book 1 and 55k Book 3 because it is such a pinnacle moment in the overall 6 book storyline, that it's one of those books that despite being shorter than most other novels, it packs a hellaofa punch. I still can't read it without crying my eyes out, and I wrote it!

I sell stories. Not wordcounts. But I definitely accept that sometimes certain features of a story, like it being less desirable to the mainstream audience that loves JAFF or it being shorter, or it being inordinately LOOONG, would require an adjustment in pricing. That's why it's very helpful to have a range: certain books are $2.99-$4.99 and maybe another range is $6.99 to $9.99. As you build a catalog of books, you have offerings at all different price points, readers can enter into your writing world anywhere.

As to categorization, Regency romance is a very specific payoff the readers are looking for. Primarily, they want a love story. If your book deviates from that in anyway, like my Seasons books are more family drama with a love story in there, it is best to consider another categorization. If you wouldn't put a traditional genre style cover on your book because "it's different" that's a good litmus test to start considering what it is you really write. It's okay to not write in the most popular genres. Any writer with 1,000 fans can make a decent living selling stories. 

Another is think about what other things do people who would love your book love to do? Are they gardeners? Are they gearheads? Are they preppers? Are they TV junkies? If so, what shows are they watching? Are they the kind of person who sponsors the PBS telethon? Do they buy premium channels on the cable bill? All of these interests broadens your advertising opportunities. If you write a series for example that could capture the audiences of HBO if it was a TV show, well you can target HBO in google ads or Facebook ads. Make it an ad that makes sense "A thrilling drama to read while you're waiting for that next season of ______" Bingo. You've clued me in as a reader what it is you have to sell. But make sure it's a MATCH. I am not going to target Game of Thrones fans with my Darcy and Elizabeth series. 

You have to get out of the mindset of your books being so different you can't connect them to anything. Make a connection to something a reader already knows, THEN Make the case for why your books are different and better or different and a good time filler.

HTH? 



megosborne said:


> Good luck with your re-releases, would love to know how this strategy (revising/expanding and re-releasing previous titles) works out for you. Are you planning on leaving the originals available to buy too, or completely replacing them?


I will be completely replacing them, losing all reviews, and starting fresh since I never applied ISBNs and that was a mistake on MY PART. I have my 3, 5, and 10-year plan and everything needs to be clearly labeled under my name as publisher.


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## Mystery Maven (Sep 17, 2014)

Elizabeth, you mentioned that pre-orders were good for experimenting with price. I've heard that all customers will end up getting the lowest price the book was listed at during the pre-order. For example, if you set your pre-order at 9.99 and then drop it to 2.99 the week before release, everyone who pre-ordered will get charged 2.99. Is this true?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Mystery Maven said:


> Elizabeth, you mentioned that pre-orders were good for experimenting with price. I've heard that all customers will end up getting the lowest price the book was listed at during the pre-order. For example, if you set your pre-order at 9.99 and then drop it to 2.99 the week before release, everyone who pre-ordered will get charged 2.99. Is this true?


Yes. There is really no reason to drop a pre-order price. If you are testing if anyone will buy your book at a higher price point, make the preorder period the length YOU are willing to experiment. Keep in mind, too, that it's pretty crappy to go $9.99 preorder and then $2.99 release price, that's probably a drop readers WOULD notice and a pattern of behavior they would respond to. Granted, if you only sold say 10 copies at $9.99 and you usually sell much more, then I would email my mailing list that I was doing a price drop and make sure those who preordered at $9.99 either got the discount or had an opportunity to return the book and get the lower price.

A better way in my mind would be say do $7.99 for preorder with a line that the release price will be $9.99 and then HOLD TO THAT for the first 90 days. Once you have lost the mojo of Hot New Release, THEN consider running a discount to prolong the sales of the book, with promotional stuff pointing at it the whole time.

I see LOTS of authors working the marketing muscle, but they confuse what is doing the work. Is it the 99 cent price point or is it the traffic they are directing to their buy page? Unless you test in isolation, you really won't know. And make sure you consider overall sales over the time period of an ad as well. Not everyone clicks. Many people SEE an ad and type it in, because there is a distrust of clicking a link.


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## Contrarian (Oct 12, 2016)

Elizabeth Ann, thanks for your reply. Lots of me to think of there.


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## TheLass (Mar 13, 2016)

Hello Elizabeth, thanks for a great thread.

Could you say a little more about your experience with Adwords please?  Most people here seem to rate Facebook Ads over it and my experience so far has been dismal.  I'd really like to get it to work.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

TheLass said:


> Hello Elizabeth, thanks for a great thread.
> 
> Could you say a little more about your experience with Adwords please? Most people here seem to rate Facebook Ads over it and my experience so far has been dismal. I'd really like to get it to work.


I use google adwords EXPRESS. That's important. I am just using text ads to drive traffic usually to free chapters. My investment will be something like $160 for a 3 week campaign targeting a lot of Jane Austen type keywords, and I'll end up with 176,000 impression and 500 clicks. That means I paid .32 a click. More importantly, I paid .90 for CPM, or cost per mille (1,000) to SEE my name and my brand.

A sample text ad I ran was:

To Capture Mr. Darcy
www.elizabethannwest.com
Read chapters free now!
Pride & Prejudice Variation

But let's say I wrote a political thriller my ad might be:

The President Will Die
mysite
Page-turning thriller
Read now, free!

The HARDEST part for authors is realizing they CAN do this. You CAN make a snappy headline to catch attention and then offer a few chapters sample for free. Doesn't have to be your title, you'll get to that, first and foremost make then WANT to click and check you out, then truly give them something free, even a mailing list sign up I'd at LEAST have a free chapter or two up before I made the ask for their email address.

Yes, people will go "Not for me," but your job is NOT to convert those who say "Not for me" but to capture those who are "wow, I like this and I just discovered it!" Eventually you can try to convert the "not for me" crowd by writing more to market etc. but to take that on, conversion of the non-interested, takes mastering the capturing of the interested, first.


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## TheLass (Mar 13, 2016)

Thank you so much Elizabeth!  It's so useful to see actual numbers.

I've never heard of Adwords Express, I will go and take a look.  Thanks again.


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## RedAlert (May 15, 2015)

Thank you for posting all this info!  Great thread!


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## Mystery Maven (Sep 17, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I use google adwords EXPRESS. That's important. I am just using text ads to drive traffic usually to free chapters. My investment will be something like $160 for a 3 week campaign targeting a lot of Jane Austen type keywords, and I'll end up with 176,000 impression and 500 clicks. That means I paid .32 a click. More importantly, I paid .90 for CPM, or cost per mille (1,000) to SEE my name and my brand.
> 
> A sample text ad I ran was:
> 
> ...


This sounds like a great idea. Thanks!


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## Nancy_G (Jun 22, 2015)

Just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing this wealth of information. You're truly an inspiration. I love your attitude, especially about reviews. I used to be leery about upping my price to 3.99, but I have in the last week for my new release and am getting sales at that PP! Those are the readers I want, not the bargain hunters. We need to value our work more. But I can't imagine going up to 9.99, yikes! I will also be going wide with my PNR series, but doing well with my CR series so leaving that in. Hey, if you wrote a book with all this, I'd buy it!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Nancy G said:


> Just wanted to say thank you so much for sharing this wealth of information. You're truly an inspiration. I love your attitude, especially about reviews. I used to be leery about upping my price to 3.99, but I have in the last week for my new release and am getting sales at that PP! Those are the readers I want, not the bargain hunters. We need to value our work more. But I can't imagine going up to 9.99, yikes! I will also be going wide with my PNR series, but doing well with my CR series so leaving that in. Hey, if you wrote a book with all this, I'd buy it!


Working on it, but like my fiction, I will have it be completely free too, I have decided. People can support it if they want, or not. I am working on a site as we speak and it's a project I have mulled for a year+. I started off in non-fiction. I always stopped because I didn't think I was big enough but $100k as a part time author isn't bad at all. When I actually added it up, I wrote from June 2014-March 2015, then I stopped from April until really June because we moved, then July 2015, then I had my marriage nearly blow up and had to pull my kid out of school and take on homeschooling, and didn't get going again until February 2016 until May 2016, took off June and July, wrote again in August 2016-October 2016. So out of 28 months I only WORKED 18 months. Lowest my monthly earnings ever got was $700 on Amazon and that was February 2016 when I had not released since July 2015.

So now I know the systems I put in place do work, to a certain extent, to keep the books selling. When you have a catalog ranging from 2.99 to $9.99 in price points, 2 sales of $9.99 books, 3 sales of $4.99 books, and 3 of $2.99 is just over $30 in a day. That's almost $1,000 a month. And it's not hard to sell 1 -2 copies a day across ALL vendors of each of your 10 or 15 books. Not if you have certain things going that naturally direct a reader back into your library.

I have run a private school group on Facebook for over 18 months, and many others have taken principles I have taught and turned them into their own systems and ways of publishing. I've always loved the mantra of Think Like Publisher . . . my mantra would probably be Think Like a Publisher & Digital Entrepreneur.


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## Genevieve Mckay (Jan 19, 2015)

Thanks for taking the time to write this post. Very interesting and informative. I feel like I`m just getting my toes wet in the sea of promotions.   My first trilogy is on Amazon and in KU but I think I`m going to take my second series wide when it`s ready to be published.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

I just got a review that said "good book, especially for the price."

It made me think of this thread, and made me wonder if I can push my novels higher than $5.99.


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## Nothing To See (Aug 17, 2016)

This is a really, really great thread.  It's really useful to see what you've done with a higher set of price points.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Thanks everyone for the comments and interaction. To be honest, I always get leery putting this kind of stuff out there like "Am I coming off as a jerk?"  

For my next trick, or old trick, I am getting OFF the artificial sales rank rollercoaster.

Whatever do I mean?

Well, my experience is that we authors often mix up the cart and horse. We go "Ohhhh I have a great sales rank, that is driving sales." And it is a very logical premise. You write a book, categorize it smartly and correctly, get your tribe of people to buy the book and hope to spike the sales ranking so there's even MORE visibility, and it turns into a game of madness to make the Amazon algorithms love you.

I don't know about you, but I am NOT feeling a ton of love lately from that algorithm, are you?

So what if, I just take it out of the equation? Treat it like some authors treat their KU reads money as a bonus they do not count on. I am not going to count on the Amazon visibility machine to make my core earnings.

::insert sound effect of gasps:: 

My plan is to give each book a 6-8 week preorder period on all vendors.

The aim is to have 500 orders between all vendors. Based on my data from when I was JUST doing preorders on Amazon, I had 500 orders on 3 books I gave at least 30 days in preorder status.

I will use Facebook Video Ads and Google Express Ad the week of releases to help drum up sales to spark some momentum, but the reality is that the money I will be counting on in a give month is New.Release.Royalty(500) + Backlist.Sales.Average = Monthly Earnings.

If all of my books are between $4.99 and $9.99 which is what I am moving to, then my New.Release.Royalty value is between $1750 and $3500. My backlist earns me about $2000-$5000 a month with a new release. 

This I can do. This is a system that will naturally be enhanced by the algorithm love that these activities bring, but the system does not COUNT on the algorithm love because I will be using chapters in progress to drive traffic to my preorder listings. It's a win if I sell each new release to 500 readers worldwide. Just 500.

NOTE: If 500 is DAUNTING, don't panic. Start off with a level you CAN achieve. 10. 50. 100. Whatever. My very first book, Cancelled, sold 28 copies the first 17 days. Everyone starts somewhere.


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## Elizabeth S. (Oct 20, 2016)

Thanks so much, Elizabeth, for sharing your tips and strategies! This is really helpful for those of us who are looking at all kinds of different methods and trying to figure out where to start.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Thanks everyone for the comments and interaction. To be honest, I always get leery putting this kind of stuff out there like "Am I coming off as a jerk?"
> 
> For my next trick, or old trick, I am getting OFF the artificial sales rank rollercoaster.
> 
> ...


This is more or less exactly what I've been doing. My last preorder for a series got over 300 in four weeks. I think 500 is perfectly reasonable. I don't discount on new books, either. And I love preorders.


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## S.B. Williams (Jul 24, 2012)

GeneDoucette said:


> This is more or less exactly what I've been doing. My last preorder for a series got over 300 in four weeks. I think 500 is perfectly reasonable. I don't discount on new books, either. And I love preorders.


I agree that an average of 500 is reasonable. My preorder numbers have increased with each release, with last one reaching 527. I think now based on the response from my mailing list, I can count on that range going forward. I've been pricing everything at $4.99 but discounted to $3.99 during the preorder period. Still in select for now.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Do preorders make any sense on a new pen name, or are they only really effective once you have established a reader base?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> Do preorders make any sense on a new pen name, or are they only really effective once you have established a reader base?


It depends, are you counting on that algorithm love? 

In other words, when NY Publishing has a debut author, do they make them a preorder? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

So if you ARE going to start a new pen name, are you the publisher supporting that pen name with a "debut" marketing push? Or are you planning to use other tools like fast release to try to drum up interest and let the chips fall where they may?

To make a preorder for a debut pen name work, you are going to have to actively PUSH traffic to the preorder listing because there is no pre-existing customer base inside the vendor system for referral other than categorization. Then again, what kind of impression does it make on a reader for a debut author name with a professional product page to have a preorder? My opinion on that is that the reader considers it something special/different than just another new author name.

You could make a blog with a few sample chapters up, have the preorder link at the bottom. You could take comments and reader feedback and use those quotes to help talk about the book in other advertising. "Cannot wait, this hero is so dreamy . . ." Read a chapter of NEW AUTHOR's DEBUT release, and see if you don't fall in love. Have a sign up list at the bottom of the chapter, even if people don't preorder, you start a list of interest to email when the book is available.

These are things that take back control of your publishing company. It's fantastic when Amazon's systems do the heavy lifting for you, but taking a little bit of time to invest in yourself can mean Amazon or the other vendor helps anyway, and you're just that much more further along than writing to market and clicking publish.


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## MCwrites (May 26, 2016)

Bookmarking- so much great info here. Thank you, Elizabeth.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> It depends, are you counting on that algorithm love?
> 
> In other words, when NY Publishing has a debut author, do they make them a preorder? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
> 
> ...


Oh, these are lovely ideas, Elizabeth. I need to look into Google Adwords Express and figure out how to make that work for me. I've been so busy focusing on getting the books written for the new pen that I've barely given any thought to the publishing side, so this is extremely helpful.


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## DebDougall (Jun 18, 2015)

Fantastic post! Thank you so much, Elizabeth.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

Much good info! Thank you, Elizabeth.


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## azebra (Jul 30, 2011)

I can attest that people will buy at $9.99


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

Allyson J. said:


> After increasing my prices from $3.99 to $4.99, I've seen no drop in sales (even on Amazon) these first few days.


I've been selling through the KDP (formerly DTP) since it opened up in November 2007. I have never seen a drop in sales when I raised the price, nor an increase when I lowered it. Currently my priciest book is $7.95, but most are $3.99 and $4.99, and the short ones are $2.99. Maybe I should make all the full-length books $7.95 while keeping the shorties at $2.99.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Nice to hear so many others raised prices and didn't see an issue. 

I have an update on my efforts :

The Whisky Wedding is done and up for preorder to kick off the "Last day of the month = new book from me" effort by releasing in 10 days. It has 370 preorders, only 10 of those are not Amazon. So I definitely have my work cut out for me in getting readers on the other vendors to preorder. However, this was my baseline test. Next big release will get fanfare and a launch for advertising. I needed to see how preorder perform for me today with minimal advertising. The book is also completely up in draft form on Fanfiction and I've not had a SINGLE CANCELLATION. yeah. I am really thrilled by that. 

I think I am going to hit 500 preorder before the 31st. We will see. It definitely ramps up closer to, but there might be a lot of competition in that timeframe, too. So we will see. That IS my new method, go for 500 preorders + backlist for salary. use the extra to reinvest into the business.

I am also writing every M-f from 530 am to about 830 am with fellow Kboarder Boyd Craven. If anyone else is up to sprinting at that time, let me know and I will get you connect to our space where we meet for accountability at o dark thirty. I don't quite sprint the way others do, I dictate, so I record 20-30 minutes, and then transcribe it, but we all share word counts and even if you're editing sprints, that's okay too. 

I am sick today, stupid head cold, but I am really excited for 2017. Really excited. This month including the preorders my revenue is already closing in on $4k. I can totally deal with that and am thankful I can do this my way without exclusivity and worrying about losing page reads. 

I broke my website which is becoming like an annual thing for me, so that's another thing I have to fix.  Never a dull day! LOL.


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## PenNPaper (Apr 21, 2016)

Pricing indie books at 9.99 might be the worst advice I've ever heard, but I thought, hey, who knows? So I fired up KindleSpy.

Based on the KS results for Elizabeth's Amazon US & UK earnings, she's earned approximately $500 this month.

To be fair, I ran KS on myself, and my Amazon US & UK earnings show me at $22,500 so far this month. I price from 2.99 - 4.99.

We have an equivalent number of books published.

_Edited for tone. PM me if you have any questions. --Betsy/KB Mod_


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## Andie (Jan 24, 2014)

EAW is wide, not just on Amazon. And I've heard the Kindle Spy software isn't reliable. I hope that you're taking all that into account before accusing someone of exaggerating earnings.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

This is exactly the type of nonsense that makes those who are doing well reluctant to share. 

- Elizabeth is wide not just on Amazon
- KindleSpy isn't an exact calculator of earnings

I'm sure she's more than capable of defending herself. But that post irked me so I felt compelled to respond.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

PenNPaper said:


> Pricing indie books at 9.99 might be the worst advice I've ever heard, but I thought, hey, who knows? So I fired up KindleSpy.
> 
> Based on the KS results for Elizabeth's Amazon US & UK earnings, she's earned approximately $500 this month.
> 
> ...


I also have KindleSpy, and it's never been accurate as far as earnings go. It's a great tool though for looking at price spreads and how many books are in a niche. It runs off the API Feed that is available to everyone.

My Jane Austen Fanfiction books sell well internationally. More so than most other genres.

So this is my KDP Dashboard for this month alone. You multiply British Pounds by about $1.25 and Canada and Australia are about .70-.76 depending on the exchange month, euros is 1.06. Yes, I sell in so many countries I often know the exchange rates off the top of my head. 










So Amazon total everything is $723.53 as of this morning's Book Report add up, 210 books sold for the month
Nook is $63.88 for the month 17 books sold, 2 preorders
Kobo is $51. 20 with 12 books sold. iTunes is $93.30 with 25 books sold 6 preorders, Google is $84.79 for 22 books sold 2 preorders, Paperback is $24.16 this month with 8 titles sold. I also have audible too, which for last month was $91.90, but this month as two bounties as well, so I expect that to be about $150.

Then there's my preorders. $7 a piece, 359 on Amazon at the moment, plus 10 on the other vendors. 7 x 369 = $2583

So right now I'm at $3623 without audible, like I said, inching closer $4k LIKE I SAID. 

And since July 2014 I have had a SINGLE month where I made $700 on Amazon and that was 8 months form a release (February 2016). But with other vendors included, I've never made less than $1000 a month. I've released 14 books in 2.5 years. Faster than some, not nearly as fast as others. 

And this is a spreadsheet I have made public to many places. It's 30-day performance on Amazon only on each title since July 2014 and what the books have made on Amazon overall. My other vendors are another 15-35% depending if it's a release month or not.

I'm HAPPY you are making $22,500 in a month! That's fantastic. Your pricing might be what works for your genre. I share what I can to help who I can, everyone publishes differently. Good luck to you in 2017!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eQ4Y1rDIfxDeH60nN750CaKWsg2TZrl2o17NwHsd5g8/edit?usp=sharing


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

And thank you


Gentleman Zombie said:


> This is exactly the type of nonsense that makes those who are doing well reluctant to share.
> 
> - Elizabeth is wide not just on Amazon
> - KindleSpy isn't an exact calculator of earnings
> ...





Lynn is a pseud--uh said:


> I don't know you but I do know EAW well enough to know if she says she's made $4k then she's made 4k.
> 
> Genre plays a huge part in earnings potential for books. Smaller markets almost require a higher price to maximize earnings.





Andie said:


> EAW is wide, not just on Amazon. And I've heard the Kindle Spy software isn't reliable. I hope that you're taking all that into account before accusing someone of exaggerating earnings.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


The reaction like PenNPaper is one reason I stopped posting here so much. But tonight, it didn't bring me down thanks to seeing the support first. I am very careful to never misrepresent what I post on Kboards and other forums. I do my best to be as transparent as possible about things I test, try, grow, develop, etc.

I will make more of an effort to be present on Kboards. I know what works for me is NOT what everyone wants or even can do. Just like I can't do a book every 2 weeks etc. Nor can I write a 100,000+ word fantasy epic. Everyone HAS to do what's right for them.


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## AmpersandBookInteriors (Feb 10, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> And thank you
> The reaction like PenNPaper is one reason I stopped posting here so much. But tonight, it didn't bring me down thanks to seeing the support first. I am very careful to never misrepresent what I post on Kboards and other forums. I do my best to be as transparent as possible about things I test, try, grow, develop, etc.
> 
> I will make more of an effort to be present on Kboards. I know what works for me is NOT what everyone wants or even can do. Just like I can't do a book every 2 weeks etc. Nor can I write a 100,000+ word fantasy epic. Everyone HAS to do what's right for them.


I actually more than appreciate your input and experiences on the boards. You're going about it in a unique fashion, in a specific genre, and your success is what I consider much more attainable than those who make exceptional amounts of money in short periods of time--for the typical author, at least. These posts are the kind that say that failure is only contained within giving up.

Alternative methods are sorely needed in the self-publishing world. I certainly encourage you to share as we need more varied voices of success.


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## TheLemontree (Sep 12, 2015)

EAW, that was classy. 

I've been following your posts closely for ages now (Not at all in a stalkery fashion), and I've always found your info to be really helpful and measured. 

Your approach of having your works freely available, upselling the bought versions to already happy customers, and Google AdWords express are all things I plan to try out in 2017.

Thank you.


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## Allyson J. (Nov 26, 2014)

TheLemontree said:


> I've been following your posts closely for ages now (Not at all in a stalkery fashion), and I've always found your info to be really helpful and measured.


Same here. I always tune in for an EAW post! Realistic, helpful advice. Thank you!


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Elizabeth, 

Thank you for your gracious response.  Because of your, and others, calm but firm response to an accusation, I'm allowing the original comment to stand, though slightly edited.

PenNPaper,

Know that members here share info very generously--and if you want information, the best way to get it is to ask for it, not to speculate.  You may or may not get a direct answer, but it costs nothing to ask, civilly.

And you can agree or disagree on a marketing plan, but you must do so civilly.  Hence the editing of your post.

Betsy
KB Moderator


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Elizabeth,
> 
> Thank you for your gracious response. Because of your, and others, calm but firm response to an accusation, I'm allowing the original comment to stand, though slightly edited.
> 
> ...


No worries Betsy. I have missed Kboards, but friends I made here are still a big part of my support group. Increasingly I am seeing real challenges for indies all over and it's just going to keep getting tougher.

Thanks for the help, though. I do appreciate it.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> No worries Betsy. I have missed Kboards, but friends I made here are still a big part of my support group. Increasingly I am seeing real challenges for indies all over and it's just going to keep getting tougher.
> 
> Thanks for the help, though. I do appreciate it.


EAW,

You're always welcome here. We appreciate the info you share.

Betsy


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## Starstruck (Nov 1, 2013)

Thank you, Elizabeth!  This is great information and I appreciate the time you took to post it all.    I do have one question: do you find that your fanfiction readers convert to sales?  I used to post on fictionpress quite regularly back in the day and found solid, supportive readers.  For some reason, it never occurred to me to post my chapters there as I write them and then turn them into a self-published book once I was done.  I'm starting a new penname in a different romance genre and I'm thinking I'll give fictionpress a try.  If anything, I'll get some good feedback as I go, but I would like to drive potential readers to my mailing list as well.


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## Flying Pizza Pie (Dec 19, 2016)

Wow, great information and advice. Thanks for saying $9.99 is cool for some readers. Since I'm cheap (apparently) and like $2.99, most of my books are there too. Maybe I'm in need of an upgrade. I do remember way back, when I had a book at $6.99 and it did well. I dropped to meet the competition - oops, could have been a big mistake. Thanks again!


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Emilia Winters said:


> Thank you, Elizabeth! This is great information and I appreciate the time you took to post it all.  I do have one question: do you find that your fanfiction readers convert to sales? I used to post on fictionpress quite regularly back in the day and found solid, supportive readers. For some reason, it never occurred to me to post my chapters there as I write them and then turn them into a self-published book once I was done. I'm starting a new penname in a different romance genre and I'm thinking I'll give fictionpress a try. If anything, I'll get some good feedback as I go, but I would like to drive potential readers to my mailing list as well.


I am pretty soft on the selling. I mean I explain on my fanfiction profile I have books for sale and I say when books are on preorder but there's no links because you can't. I did invite them to a private Facebook group, but even there I'm pretty straight forward those who can buy, great. If they can't just their support and reading means a lot to me. I've lived on $20 a week, I once could only afford to read for free. And more or less, I explain those who can afford to support my books with a purchase, they allow me to keep stuff free for people who can't. It works for me, not every author will feel comfortable that way.

I have found being wide the fanfiction thing works better because some non Amazon vendors are better for other countries. There's a $3 surcharge on ebooks to countries that dont have their own Amazon store yet. Google doesn't surcharge, neither does Apple. It was my fanfiction readers that asked me for a preorder option on Apple. Only 6 have preordered there, but that's ok by me. I didn't buy any advertising this preorder on purpose so when I do next time, I can measure growth.

On days I post a chapter my Delta in sales across all vendors spikes up. It's worth about an extra $25-$75 to post a free chapters, because one really big challenge for all authors isn't finding new readers, but getting in touch with readers who already love/like you at a time it's convenient for them to buy a book. It's not always convenient, so that's why like other businesses a big part of our success is getting back in touch with previous customers. A chapter does that in a way that's free for you, free for them, and more importantly doesn't ask for a lot of their time.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Just had my best ever month at Google Play. $1631.79 in the bank. Nice little extra for Christmas


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

I do think a valid observation is that genre & niche can determine the price point. Elizabeth writes in a very underserved & difficult niche: Jane Austen fanfic. That's not something a lot writers can do. In order to make that work, an author should be very knowledgeable about Austen's works. Which means the demand is great but the supply is low. So $9.99 makes sense here. 

Now if I'm writing contemporary billionaire romances -- a $9.99 price point is suicide. Sure there's demand but there's a glut of cheap books in that genre.  $3.99 will probably be the price ceiling. (That's just a guestimate based on personal observation).  I think Domino Finn recently went ride @ $4.99 and that appears to be working very well for him. But again he's writing "tough guy" urban fantasy - which isn't yet overcrowded. 

I hope my crazy observations are making sense here. I actually have a 2017 plan which is going to put this idea to the test... so we'll see if I'm right.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

Gentleman Zombie said:


> I do think a valid observation is that genre & niche can determine the price point. Elizabeth writes in a very underserved & difficult niche: Jane Austen fanfic. That's not something a lot writers can do. In order to make that work, an author should be very knowledgeable about Austen's works. Which means the demand is great but the supply is low. So $9.99 makes sense here.


I've noticed quite a lot of authors piling into the JAFF sub-genre lately. A sizable chunk of the Regency cat is taken up with them, and there are now quite a few cheaper and shorter books available, nor does familiarity with Jane Austen seem to be a pre-requisite, if the reviews are anything to go by. That said, EAW has already established her fanbase, so I don't think she'll have the slightest difficulty selling at her usual price point.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Actually, I would argue there is a way to sell contemporary romance at $9.99 as well. And I would say it takes the same methods that I'm using, what @TheLemonTree already said, I am free and upselling to already happy customers.

IF I was doing contemporary romance again, and yes, I say again, because I wrote it before that was my first book, my strategy would be similar. Break down what it is that I can deliver to readers. Be service based in my publishing. A book a month that is X Y Z whatever X Y Z is. In my case, I probably would write military and about submarines because I know that world, best. Then, using my connects to military spouse groups, I would cultivate a fanbase that absolutely had no issues paying $9.99 for a 300-400 page novel. I would do destination style too, like following the boat to different port calls. That's another inroad. Then I would make a blog that shared chapters and real life experiences that attracted readers, got them funneled to a mailing list, had the buy button at the bottom. And I would buy keyword advertising on Facebook and Google. The goal would be the same, 500 readers to buy at $9.99 = $3500. 10 books a year = $35,000.

*The whole having to chart in the main bestseller list is absolutely moot with this system.* You are literally handling your customer list instead of relying solely on a vendor to do that for you. And when you do this type of strategy, bypassing the bargain book blogs and mailing lists (because guess how they built their lists? google ads and facebook ads), the other side of it, the vendor marketing and the vendor support happens.

And I wouldn't go I need 500 readers right now. I would aim for 100 on the first book. 250 on the second, Etc. set attainable goals to go after.

When I came into JAFF, no one was pricing at $9.99. The ONLY books that were that price were the books published by trad pub. But they had left the genre for the most part by 2014 (Eligible and Emma came out in 2015). And this is a truth for EVERY GENRE OUT THERE. Every single one. There has been a trad pub offering in it that some readers bought at the higher price point. The best-selling author in JAFF when I started was doing a novel a year, sometimes 2, at $3.99. She STILL does her novels at $3.99.  There was one press willing to price at $7.99 IF the book was 400+ pages.

I take it back, there was one other author who was pricing at $9.99 with her one book and doing well but again, she owned a forum for JAFF that was an off-shoot of another place. She had done what I did, built her fanbase in her playground, made buying the book a part of the overall community ("Buy this book and help me keep this wonderful place open.")

Anyway, the long story short of it is that even in JAFF, I am still one of the highest priced authors in the genre and that hasn't changed. My novellas sell for $2.99-$4.99, my novels $6.99-$9.99. It's easy to say "oh, she can price this way because she writes JAFF" but the reality is no, I can price this way because that is the system I set up.  Any genre has niches in it, with keywords. And I'm not talking about Amazon keywords here, though you need those too, I'm talking about keywords like how does a reader who loves books like yours find them?

I know for my type of books, readers search Darcy. And when I do Google Keyword Analysis, both Darcy and Pride and Prejudice are stronger keywords than Jane Austen, as the Jane Austen is also murky because it includes academia about the author. And this is also where being a fan of your genre comes in, I knew how readers find books like mine because for 10 years, I did THAT. 

How do readers who love cyber thrillers find those? Do they have a favorite big name in the genre and just cruise their also boughts? Or do they search for books like ________ and that's a TV show or a movie in the blank? That's another thing authors forget, fans of genre fiction are also often fans of genre entertainment. If someone loves zombie fiction they also probably like one of the zombie movies or TV shows (I say one because like there is a huge spread in zombie fiction, those who like gore, those who like the psychological aspect of the idea, etc). If someone likes Madame Secretary, they might also like political thrillers or dramas with female leads. ETC.

So yeah, I break my marketing plans down into paying the least amount possible per 1,000 readers to know I exist. I most often seek that exposure through free things like blogging chapters or putting them up somewhere like Wattpad or Fictionpress or Fanfiction. I also have done video ads and text based ads, those are cheapest. My goals are always the most amount of people seeing MY NAME. I know that when I accomplish that, everything else, EVERYTHING ELSE, is resolved on the other side because of HOW sites and stores on the Internet work. Just one CLICK on my Facebook page, or my website signals the overlords who run on COOKIES (teehee) that person had an interest in me. And then all of the systems that are paid for by the 30-40% I give my vendor kick in and that reader starts seeing advertising on social media, advertising on the book sites, all pitching my books. And the vendor is salivating to do so because their cut is a good one.

And many of the new names in JAFF are people I have helped and encouraged and shared tips with.  I don't fear too many authors coming in and writing JAFF, I fear too many not. For me to have a career in 5 to 10 years, whether I move also into other genres or not, the only way my backlist JAFF will sell is if there is still JAFF being published to keep the readers reading.  It is true that JAFF is still not big enough volume for the bigger publishers in most cases. But, one day it will rise up again, it just does. And when it does, I will be that author sitting there with 30 titles at $4.99-$9.99, waiting to serve the need.


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## Gentleman Zombie (May 30, 2011)

Just read your recent post and.....










Seriously gobsmacked, as I think you just gave me a huge gift. This is bookmarked so I can re-read again slowly!!!!


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Actually, I would argue there is a way to sell contemporary romance at $9.99 as well. And I would say it takes the same methods that I'm using, what @TheLemonTree already said, I am free and upselling to already happy customers.
> 
> IF I was doing contemporary romance again, and yes, I say again, because I wrote it before that was my first book, my strategy would be similar. Break down what it is that I can deliver to readers. Be service based in my publishing. A book a month that is X Y Z whatever X Y Z is. In my case, I probably would write military and about submarines because I know that world, best. Then, using my connects to military spouse groups, I would cultivate a fanbase that absolutely had no issues paying $9.99 for a 300-400 page novel. I would do destination style too, like following the boat to different port calls. That's another inroad. Then I would make a blog that shared chapters and real life experiences that attracted readers, got them funneled to a mailing list, had the buy button at the bottom. And I would buy keyword advertising on Facebook and Google. The goal would be the same, 500 readers to buy at $9.99 = $3500. 10 books a year = $35,000.


Elizabeth, I respect you and always read your informative posts. . .but as someone who writes contemporary romance I have to say that you'd seriously sabotage your earning potential with this business plan. I don't know the JAFF market, but I do know the market for contemporary romance. If you'd publish 10 books a year at $3.99, and you'd be willing to invest in facebook and google advertising, you could be looking at a six figures income. You can absolutely use all your tactics to acquire customers, and not rely on the likes of Bookbub or Amazon's algorithm to push your books, and you'd make FAR more that $35.000 a year.

The market is huge and hungry and yes you can set yourself apart even if you price at $3.99. The percentage of the market willing to pay $9.99 is very low. A while ago a romance author (I forgot the name) made a large poll asking readers about their buying habits. That was an author who has trad pub books at $7.99 and self pubbed once priced lower so she's seen both sides of the coin. The results pointed out something along the lines of losing about 70% of the market if you price above $6.99. I don't remember more details unfortunately, but I think there are other reports floating around.

I say this with the best intentions and because I want you to succeed. If you do decide to go into contemporary romance again, seriously consider pricing at $3.99 or $4.99.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Elizabeth, I respect you and always read your informative posts. . .but as someone who writes contemporary romance I have to say that you'd seriously sabotage your earning potential with this business plan. I don't know the JAFF market, but I do know the market for contemporary romance. If you'd publish 10 books a year at $3.99, and you'd be willing to invest in facebook and google advertising, you could be looking at a six figures income. You can absolutely use all your tactics to acquire customers, and not rely on the likes of Bookbub or Amazon's algorithm to push your books, and you'd make FAR more that $35.000 a year.
> 
> The market is huge and hungry and yes you can set yourself apart even if you price at $3.99. The percentage of the market willing to pay $9.99 is very low. A while ago a romance author (I forgot the name) made a large poll asking readers about their buying habits. That was an author who has trad pub books at $7.99 and self pubbed once priced lower so she's seen both sides of the coin. The results pointed out something along the lines of losing about 70% of the market if you price above $6.99. I don't remember more details unfortunately, but I think there are other reports floating around.
> 
> I say this with the best intentions and because I want you to succeed. If you do decide to go into contemporary romance again, seriously consider pricing at $3.99 or $4.99.


I would at least try it at $9.99. But I do respect that others have tried higher price points and not seen the results they wanted. I just don't ever take that to mean that I can't achieve my results that I want.

I would differentiate myself IF I was tackling that market with longer books because looingk at it, that seems to be a place where there is a shortage. For me, it's all about finding those places where there's a few thousand readers not being served. As for the 500 and making $35,000, that's just the hard set money. Backlist etc. sells after that too. And I can also always run promotions to dip down to $2.99 or $4.99 on a $9.99 book.

Again, this is all hypothetical. I am not actively pursuing this (contemporary romance). My next genre will more than likely remain historical romance/drama as that is what I enjoy writing.  But regardless of what price any author wants to use, they can absolutely use the methods of driving traffic and marketing through more traditional channels instead of waiting for acceptance by a gatekeeper on a mailing list or blog to accept their ad.

I watched Bookbub use a faux press release called The Book Insider with Yahoo Ad Network and Google Ad network that read like those "news" articles for acai berries etc. but it was a "news" article about readers finding free and low cost ebooks with links to sign up. When you clicked the bottom, it was disclosed it was a paid article owned by Bookbub. And there's nothing WRONG with this, more power to Bookbub! But the point is that if you have anything that people want, you can put an offer out there and collect them yourself.

I write and sell stories. I don't let another person's success define my worth. If Nora Roberts can have a shifter romance for $11.99 then I can have a military romance for $9.99.  And yeah, people say "Well, that's Nora Roberts." Well no one told Nora Roberts she could BE Nora Roberts, she just is. And I'm not waiting for someone to tell me I can be Elizabeth Ann West. I just am. And when you read her story and history and Publisher's Weekly you really learn that as indies, we just have really unreasonable expectations for success with such few titles.

For example, when you read her Wikipedia page carefully, you learn she hit the Hardcover Bestseller list with her 4th hardcover release in 1996. She had been writing since 1979 and published since 1980. Then you read a little further and it states that title, Montana Sky, was her 100th title! If you go to her site, her first bestseller was in 1991.

I KNOW publishing IS different these days, it's faster. It's streamlined. But, I have just seen too many authors hit 6-figures one year only to never find it again. There's a lot more of them than there are the names we all say as indie all-stars. I don't want to be an author that hits 6-figures only because of Amazon's recommendation engines.

I had $55k gross for tax year 2015 with 6 releases and I have about $55k gross again this year with only 3 releases. I am striving for 2017 to be my first year of $100k, with a release every month. And if it is, I promise I will shout so loudly in upstate NY everyone will hear it!  I just feel safer building on the established retail cycle. That's me. And I've tried the other things of lower prices and permafree and the data doesn't show those methods work better for me with my strengths and weaknesses.

We just never know until we try. I appreciate always that other indies have come before me in the trails I blaze, but I don't let that stop me from trying out another path based on my experiences and work in internet commerce as a whole.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> But, I have just seen too many authors hit 6-figures one year only to never find it again. There's a lot more of them than there are the names we all say as indie all-stars. I don't want to be an author that hits 6-figures only because of Amazon's recommendation engines.


Fair enough, but I don't understand one point. Why do you equate pricing at $3.99 (or building a six figures business at $3.99) with relying only on Amazon's recommendation's engine?

Maybe I'm understanding this wrong. My point is that you can build a loyal fan base at any price point...I see Amazon's recommendation engine as extra cash (which I use for acquiring new readers via fb advertising) not as the bread and butter of the business, but you're a savy marketer so I'd really try to understand your view on this (sorry, I'm really slow today).


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

RomanceAuthor said:


> Fair enough, but I don't understand one point. Why do you equate pricing at $3.99 (or building a six figures business at $3.99) with relying only on Amazon's recommendation's engine?
> 
> Maybe I'm understanding this wrong. My point is that you can build a loyal fan base at any price point...I see Amazon's recommendation engine as extra cash (which I use for acquiring new readers via fb advertising) not as the bread and butter of the business.


I think then we are in agreement and just differing on if it's worth it to try a $9.99 price point.  I sort of jumped to the conclusion that the point of being $3.99 is to sell more copies. I really can't say if I would make more or less than the $3.99 authors in that genre, because I'm not writing in it, so it's really unfair of me to project there. And if I tried my methods and $9.99 and didn't make the money I wanted to make, I would adjust. I just wouldn't be $3.99 solely so that I could sell enough to hit the Amazon bestseller lists.

I definitely COULD see though if I was in that genre for a few years, older titles going down in price and new releases being more in line with how trad pub does it.

Anyway, I will respect that what you say is absolutely true for the authors who tested it. They make more money at $3.99 than $6.99+ as that is always an economic equation where supply and demand meet. I just would be crazy enough to see if the same curve applied to my books and be willing to test for more than a few releases before I came to a conclusion. I wouldn't though rely on a reader survey. I love readers, I am one. And even I would always answer I would want a book cheaper, but if it's a book I want, I will pay the price it is.

The JAFF author who prices at $3.99 does so because of a reader survey. But those of us who have tested, again and again, the lower prices do not = higher volume, and in the off chance that they do, it's not enough to make up for the margins. If I sell 1,000 books a $9.99, the author who is $3.99 has to sell 2500 books to match. In my genre, that's really pushing the upper limits of the 30-day performance for any title. And then backlist wise, they perform pretty similarly for the size of the author's catalog and footprint in the customer base.


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Nice post, Ms. West... as usual. 

I've long been an advocate for higher priced books. Almost all of my 90-110K word novels are at $9.99, and I rarely had any complaints.

Recently, I released a new SERIAL, with episodes of 35-55K words each. I decided to price them low, @ $2.99. Any three episodes would be a super-long novel for $8.97.
I received more 1-star reviews because of the pricing than any of my other novels. It was amazing. People who had left 5-star reviews for 92K titles @ $9.99 lambasted the serial for its pricing. Go figure.

Anyway, I have long thought that indies unvalued their work. In my humble opinion, pricing should be the last marketing differential, not the first.
I also would like to remind folks about ACX and audio books. In that market, the author doesn't set the price- Amazon does. There, the sales price is based on length. Yet, I know for a fact that a lot of indies are making bank on their audio books. Our "product" holds its own against the same level of competition as we face in ebooks and paperbacks. 

Keep up the good work, Ms. West.


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## RomanceAuthor (Aug 18, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I think then we are in agreement and just differing on if it's worth it to try a $9.99 price point.  I sort of jumped to the conclusion that the point of being $3.99 is to sell more copies. I really can't say if I would make more or less than the $3.99 authors in that genre, because I'm not writing in it, so it's really unfair of me to project there. And if I tried my methods and $9.99 and didn't make the money I wanted to make, I would adjust. I just wouldn't be $3.99 solely so that I could sell enough to hit the Amazon bestseller lists.
> 
> I definitely COULD see though if I was in that genre for a few years, older titles going down in price and new releases being more in line with how trad pub does it.
> 
> ...


Thank you for the clarification


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Nice post, Ms. West... as usual.
> 
> I've long been an advocate for higher priced books. Almost all of my 90-110K word novels are at $9.99, and I rarely had any complaints.
> 
> ...


HEY THERE! Saw you in another thread. Good to see you, Joe!  I'm still keeping on, keeping on. Thanks to Boyd I've found a way to write like a banshee in the wee hours of the morning and still spin all of my plates. 2017 better watch out! 

How are you?


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## Joe_Nobody (Oct 23, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> HEY THERE! Saw you in another thread. Good to see you, Joe!  I'm still keeping on, keeping on. Thanks to Boyd I've found a way to write like a banshee in the wee hours of the morning and still spin all of my plates. 2017 better watch out!
> 
> How are you?


Still recovering from the flood, but things are slowly getting back to normal. Still the mayor of Grindersville, pumping out a title now and then to keep Mrs Nobody off the streets.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Joe_Nobody said:


> Still recovering from the flood, but things are slowly getting back to normal. Still the mayor of Grindersville, pumping out a title now and then to keep Mrs Nobody off the streets.


Man, glad you are recovering, though. Hubby and I are eyeing property in Texas. He's from there. I technically am a citizen, according to my DL.  But yeah, in 5 years when he retires from the military my goal is to be writing the books to keep Mr. West in a lifestyle he deserves for all of the years he's been the breadwinner.  I want to have 50 titles by then or bust. October 1, 2021.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Hey, EAW--

Just wanted to let you know:  when I click on your "Read my stories free" link in your sig and it takes me to your site under construction, the link you have on that page to get a list of your stories isn't clickable.  At least not on my iPad. (I was still able to check out your books by going to the books link at the top, by the way.)  Picked up a couple of your books incidentally. 

Betsy


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> Hey, EAW--
> 
> Just wanted to let you know: when I click on your "Read my stories free" link in your sig and it takes me to your site under construction, the link you have on that page to get a list of your stories isn't clickable. At least not on my iPad. (I was still able to check out your books by going to the books link at the top, by the way.) Picked up a couple of your books incidentally.
> 
> Betsy


Yeah, I broke my website. I am being bad and posting here, stalling on the last 25% of copy edits to finalize on the new book. I am not allowing myself to fall down the rabbit hole of webdesign until Whisky Wedding is laid out and with the distributors. Prolly should add Kboards to that list. 

And you did not have to buy any of my books, but thank you. That was very kind of you. But seriously, I give them free to any and all and for all of YOUR hard work, Betsy and Anne and now Becca, ya'll definitely deserve the perks of being in peer group. 

Merry Christmas, Betsy.


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## Kevin Lee Swaim (May 30, 2014)

I would just like to point out that I miss your old profile photo with the hat...


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> I am not allowing myself to fall down the rabbit hole of webdesign until Whisky Wedding is laid out and with the distributors. Prolly should add Kboards to that list.


No! 



> Merry Christmas, Betsy.


Merry Christmas! And to all the KBoards peeps!

Betsy


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## Mari Oliver (Feb 12, 2016)

Hi, Elizabeth. I just wanted to say thank you for sharing all of this information here on Kboards. I'm actually on the verge of placing a novel on pre-order and will be giving your suggestions on that subject a try. Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic 2017!


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Thanks to Boyd I've found a way to write like a banshee in the wee hours of the morning and still spin all of my plates. 2017 better watch out!


Dictation?


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> Dictation?


Yes I always had dictation. But now I get up at 5:30 EST to report to the desk to write for 3 hours before my kiddo wakes up. For 3 weeks we've done this (this week, week 4 I have been up but working on edits) and I wrote 45,000 words. Finished up an 85,000 word book, my longest yet.

Anyway, my goal is just 3k raw a day that way, more when I can, but a minimum of 2 scenes from my outline. I dictate 20-40 minutes and transcribe, the others sprint 25 minutes at a time. I truly cannot type like that anymore.  So dictation only for me, but the accountability and word count sharing has made all the difference for me.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> Yes I always had dictation. But now I get up at 5:30 EST to report to the desk to write for 3 hours before my kiddo wakes up. For 3 weeks we've done this (this week, week 4 I have been up but working on edits) and I wrote 45,000 words. Finished up an 85,000 word book, my longest yet.
> 
> Anyway, my goal is just 3k raw a day that way, more when I can, but a minimum of 2 scenes from my outline. I dictate 20-40 minutes and transcribe, the others sprint 25 minutes at a time. I truly cannot type like that anymore.  So dictation only for me, but the accountability and word count sharing has made all the difference for me.


OK. I've heard some people here say that dictation costs them more time doing edits than they save so I was curious. It sounds like the big difference for you was blocking out the time when you could write without interruptions and then sticking to the schedule, though.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

KelliWolfe said:


> OK. I've heard some people here say that dictation costs them more time doing edits than they save so I was curious. It sounds like the big difference for you was blocking out the time when you could write without interruptions and then sticking to the schedule, though.


Yes a big part was the schedule, but really just not feeling alone. I SUCK at being an introvert in this whole writing thing. I always say I would totally put a desk in Times Square and write LIVE and I mean it. It's one reason I post chapters free. Having the author friendship of "did you write today?" and it being people I want to healthfully compete with, makes the word of difference.

As to dictation vs typing.

You know I have data, right?

I track my sessions since I transcribe it's not hard. Over those three weeks here's what I have:

Per 1,000 words
Raw material (dictating into the recorder, transcribing): 55 wpm or 18 mins for 1,000 words
Rough draft (editing pass to clean up, rewrite, fix dictation errors): 70 wpm or 14.25 minutes for those 1,000 words
Final draft (go through, reread, approve edits from copyeditor): 111 wpm or 9 min for 1,000 words

That works out to 1,000 costing 41 minutes of production time from me from start to ready to publish.

A 50,000 word novel is therefore 35 hours. (34.16667)
A 30,000 word novella is 21 hours. (20.5)

I write and edit 5:30-8:30 AM M-F, testing if I can back it up to 4:30 AM. But regardless, 3 hours a day, times 5 is 15. 4 weeks is 60.

Zero excuses to not get a novel or a novella done per month.


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

You are my hero, EAW.  I need to start doing this with my quilting.

Betsy


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> As to dictation vs typing.
> 
> You know I have data, right?


Those are awesome numbers, Elizabeth. Especially for a 3 hour workday.


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## 88149 (Dec 13, 2015)

Betsy the Quilter said:


> You are my hero, EAW. I need to start doing this with my quilting.
> 
> Betsy


Awright, so how do you dictate a stitch? What's your goal, 10 patches an hour? One quilt every four weeks? C'mon, Betsy, if EAW can fess up, so can you.


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## Contrarian (Oct 12, 2016)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> And thank you
> The reaction like PenNPaper is one reason I stopped posting here so much. But tonight, it didn't bring me down thanks to seeing the support first. I am very careful to never misrepresent what I post on Kboards and other forums. I do my best to be as transparent as possible about things I test, try, grow, develop, etc.
> 
> I will make more of an effort to be present on Kboards. I know what works for me is NOT what everyone wants or even can do. Just like I can't do a book every 2 weeks etc. Nor can I write a 100,000+ word fantasy epic. Everyone HAS to do what's right for them.


Elizabeth Ann, I love your posts. When I read them, I believe that making money writing books is possible. I don't feel that way when some others post.

A lot of people here take umbrage when anyone questions their method of achieving sales. And I wonder, why are they so angry when they're making money? If I were making money, I wouldn't care what the naysayers said.

Keep up the good work. I wish you the best in everything.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

It's funny but I am an advocate of charging what your particular market will bear. 

That's why I don't criticize those authors who sell books at 99c or use permafree. Neither do I criticize authors who charge $9.99. If you can make a living doing either, more power to you. It's a damn hard business to be in. Most will not have success, as in earning a living off their book sales. 

Know your why a la the Sterling and Stone mantra - why are you doing this? Art? Fun? Accolades? Money? BIG BIG MONEY? Price accordingly. Some authors can price at 99c and make a huge living. Some can charge 99c and not sell a copy. Some can charge $6.99 and hit the USAT / NYT lists. Some can charge $6.99 and not sell a copy. Some, like Elizabeth, can charge $9.99 and make a decent living. Some can charge $9.99 and not sell a copy.

It really depends on the book and genre. Plus how savvy the author is re: business.

When you're writing in an underserved niche, you can probably charge more and prosper. When you're writing in a very hot genre like Contemporary Romance, you probably can only charge $9.99 when you are a huge seller with several letters after your name and maybe even a trad publisher behind you. 

That's the market. Not one size fits all.


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## Contrarian (Oct 12, 2016)

Joe_Nobody said:


> I've long been an advocate for higher priced books. Almost all of my 90-110K word novels are at $9.99, and I rarely had any complaints.
> 
> Recently, I released a new SERIAL, with episodes of 35-55K words each. I decided to price them low, @ $2.99. Any three episodes would be a super-long novel for $8.97.
> I received more 1-star reviews because of the pricing than any of my other novels. It was amazing. People who had left 5-star reviews for 92K titles @ $9.99 lambasted the serial for its pricing. Go figure.
> ...


I, too, have received more 1* reviews of people complaining over price on my lower priced books.

These are novellas that cost $1.99 or $2.99 and people complain over a dollar or two. These people expect epics for that price, which I think is grossly unfair.

My response--after many years I got tired of the "too short, not worth the money"--I raised my prices, but only a dollar apiece for each book. My sales have never been good, but I hope the higher prices chase away the people who equate price with word count.


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## Elizabeth Ann West (Jul 11, 2011)

So I had a dream last night I was writing modern P&P in contemporary romance. LOL.

The problem I have with "what the market can bear" is that we are talking about a spread of $10. Literally. And that's not what I see happening out there. 

If you are priced .99 because that's what your data has shown you to be the best supply vs demand curve for earnings, then rock it. Absolutely. 

But if you're pricing low  permanently because you don't have USAToday Bestseller status or a trad publisher and there are books selling for the higher prices in your genre, then raise up! 

When you go to the movie theater,the ticket to the movie is the same whether it's an Oscar contender or a Marvel blockbuster, or a Sundance flop. The DIFFERENCE is the number of theaters the movie is in (distribution, which for us on Amazon and Nook and Google and iTunes and Kobo etc are pretty available, but we aren't in brick and mortar physically just orderable and even that I think is changing in the next 5-10 years), and the budget the movie was made and the volume of tickets that will sell.

The movies are the same ticket price. The difference is how many are going to want to see it, and what budget was used to make the movie. 

It is a tricky thing, figuring out your volume and optimal price point. A great way to do it is like what I do, I am not $9.99 all the time on everything.  I have a range of products at different lengths and different prices, all designed with an intent of a robust catalog of titles to have something for every reader. Even the readers who can't afford anything. I serve them worldwide with free chapters. My book coming out on December 31 had readers from 94 different countries on it.  I don't leave anyone behind.  

This is different than authors that build a catalog that is all 1-2 price points and lengths. There ARE readers out there looking for great books at $9.99. And no, they aren't shopping the cheaper books because TIME is their most precious commodity and they don't feel like playing slush pile. 

One day I WILL be on the NYTimes Bestseller List and the USAToday Bestseller lists and when it happens I pray I have like 30 titles with half of them $9.99.  That way when I achieve that level of exposure, it's not wasted. I have watched the indies for years. We've had the firsts to sell millions, the firsts to make millions, and I've also seen the real challenges in trying to convert an audience used to .99 to 2.99 when an author gets a deal with a larger publisher. I don't want to be that last author. I even have it in my plans to go after a trad pub deal eventually, as just one more feather in the cap. 

I AM lucky that I am getting to enjoy all of these amazing tools and distributions available and I am fairly young in my career, but others are younger still. I'm 34. I know who I want to be when I'm 39 and where I want to be. And when I'm 44. etc.  

I am a writer. I am a publisher. I am a businesswoman. 

At no time am I *just* a content producer for Amazon. 

It's this last mindset I think that creeps in unintentionally and closes off opportunity to so many brilliant writers on this board especially because it IS "kboards" and the k stands for Kindle.  With so much focus and push on KU and cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, it does become a game of making the most of Amazon's systems. Trust me, I was floored the day I realized I can go after 6-figures in a year with 10 releases and not give a fig about Amazon.com sales rankings. Because I don't need it. It will happen and do what it's supposed to do so long as I take care of the other areas that matter, publishing strong titles and working on my relationship with my readers.  

I am not worried about the message of "Price LOW and get lots of volume," getting out there. That message is pretty well-established.  I worry for the authors who try that and can't make it work and want to quit because they can "only" sell 100 copies or 400 copies, whatever. That's not failure. 

I will repeat that, that's NOT FAILURE.

And most don't know that, that the vast majority of even trad pub releases don't move the kind of volume that the indie megasellers are reporting. It's OK and even an opportunity to make a living at this only selling 500 books a month on your whole catalog . . . especially when your average royalty is $4-5.


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## AmpersandBookInteriors (Feb 10, 2012)

Elizabeth Ann West said:


> So I had a dream last night I was writing modern P&P in contemporary romance. LOL.
> 
> The problem I have with "what the market can bear" is that we are talking about a spread of $10. Literally. And that's not what I see happening out there.
> 
> ...


If you would please stop saying such smart things that'd be great. 

This is the exact plan my wife and I are going for at this very moment. Even a day that sells only one copy of books 1-3 in her current running series nets us almost $13.00.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I should add that people price their books for different reasons. 

For some authors, pricing a book 99c may mean reaching a bigger audience and gaining visibility. For others, 99c may be to move a lot of the first in series so you get read through to the next books. For others, pricing at $4.99 may mean it's time to take some profit. 

I know NYTs bestselling authors who used to charge 99c a copy when they started out but who now charge $4.99 and $5.99 for their books. They could charge 99c and maybe get higher volume of sales on release, but they would leave a lot on the table. At their stage of career and success level, their audience will buy any book they write as long as the price is within reason -- say -- below $9.99.

There is nothing hard and fast about pricing. It depends on where you are in your career trajectory. It depends on your goals. It depends on your author platform. It depends on your market.

The great thing about being indie is that we can pivot, we can adapt, we can try stuff and find what works -- for us.


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