Offthebookshelf.com

Posted September 21, 2010 14:50

I just lowered the prices on all my ebooks again after getting some very BAD advice from a guy on another forum who claimed he raised his prices and got more sales as a result. He said to test his theory, so I did. Not only did it decrease sales, it made the payout adjustment that much more complicated. So I opted for the middle ground and a modest increase instead. I usually price my ebooks at about 1/2 to 1/3 the price of the printed books, but as retailers like Amazon must have their pound of flesh, pricing an ebook too low may increase sales slightly but the author loses a significant amount of money in the process. Now all my ebooks are priced below $9.00 no matter the cost of the printed book and that should be okay. Others ask for large amounts, and I don't feel comfortable with that. The book price has to be balanced with the amount of labor used to produce it. Since an ebook takes virtually no effort I do not know why publishers want to charge as much for an ebook as they do for a printed book. I see ebooks as a means to publicize the printed books, or to make them available for people who don't want to carry their libraries around with them. I would rather be selling the printed books but they are harder to sell these days. More and more people want their ereaders.

I get the impression sometimes that if I give up on the printed books and just sell ebooks I would be a lot better off.

Posted September 21, 2010 18:02

Don't give up on printed books. Offthebookshelf hasn't. By the way, how are you marketing?

Posted September 22, 2010 16:06

Pretty much the same way most others do. A website, social networking, videos, press releases, blogging (though I have less and less time to do that now), and participating in forum discussions. I just joined three more groups on Gather just to reach the hard to get at places. I gave up on email because usually the email addresses turn out to be out of date or their mailer daemon bounces the messages back. And that's even if the site shows which email contact to use. I also post ads on various shopping directories and sites and articles with others.

What's buggiing me now is that I have not seen very many sales on this site. I hope the TV commercial does the trick.

Posted September 24, 2010 12:12

Try doing radio interviews. I'll be doing anothe rone October 11 on WTAN 1340. The program is called the 'Book Club' I have also done interviews on the Marc Medly radio program 'The Readers Circle'. You can try your local radio stations, also.
Email campaigns may work for some but I have had limited success with them.

Posted October 12, 2010 18:25

No news? Somebody respond!

Posted October 14, 2010 19:43

Most e-books by indie authors are priced 5.99 or less. The big house publishers are overpricing their e-books and this is having a harsh reality check dealt to them. The best way to price your e-book is to do a genre search of your book and see what other authors are asking, then keep pace. In these times most people are going by price and of course, the lower the better.

For news, the commercial is done and will be out and about sometime next month. I think this site is poised for great things. Hang tough and market, market market. Yes blog, set up interviews, get local book stores to let you do a signing. It is the perfect time of year. Make yourself heard.

Lori Pescatore
Author of Human Blend

Posted October 18, 2010 17:38

My most expensive ebook is now $8.99. My least expensive is at $5.99. I am not going to go lower. The ebook at $8.99 also contains a full complement of illustrations and is less than a third the price of the print book. The major publisher can and will charge more. See my latest post about pricing, and you will see that it's not all roses out there.

Posted April 27, 2011 15:50

Update: My most expensive ebooks are now at about $3.99 on a sliding scale down to 99 cents. No choice. Amazon will discount a book if it feels it is necessary, so in order to capitalize on the 70% royalty margin I had to lower the prices of all my ebooks. Thus far, a lot of sales on Amazon, NO sales on Off the Bookshelf. What gives?

Posted June 13, 2011 18:13

I have just lowered the prices of my ebooks again $1-2 for the summer. Check out the books by looking them up by my author name. You might find something interesting to read.

Posted July 05, 2011 16:24

I just lowered the prices for Destiny's Forge and To Taste The Dragon's Blood to $2.99 here on Off The Bookshelf. Please take a look. Most of my ebooks are now posted for that price and no more than $5.99. It does not make sense to charge more, since customer demand has indicated that $2,99 is about average.