[nikkarina]

I am wondering if anyone has seen a substantial difference in sales when changing the price of their ebook? My book was at 2.99, I changed it to 99 cents. But I only get .35 cents then for every copy sold... I don't know if it's worth it, I've only sold 10 copies.

 

[SBJones]

After two months at 99c for my first book.  I saw a 2.5x increase in number of books sold from the $2.99 price point.  This resulted in a 50% loss in revenue from that book.  While nice, I did not see a corisponding 2.5x sales increase to my other books and I have changed the price back to match the others at $4.99.

 

[dalya]

If you have a bunch of books, you can have some at .99 as a loss-leader or to boost your # of units and author rank.

It sucks to sell full-length novels for that much. Definitely give it a shot, putting your book on sale from time to time, but track your #s and do your own analysis.

You have to sell 6 at .99 to equal 1 at $2.99.

 

[nikkarina]

If you have a bunch of books, you can have some at .99 as a loss-leader or to boost your # of units and author rank.

It sucks to sell full-length novels for that much. Definitely give it a shot, putting your book on sale from time to time, but track your #s and do your own analysis.

You have to sell 6 at .99 to equal 1 at $2.99.

That's a good way of thinking about it! I think I am going to raise the price again then. I only have one title out there and it's only been a few days, but I'm so antsy to see the sales rise. I know it takes time.

 

[FrankFields]

Just curious... how does author rank actually work vs the regular rankings each book has?  

If I have 3 pen names, does a hit book moving a lot of units for one of those names benefit the other 2 pen names?  Or just other books under that pen name?

 

[Bruce Blake]

I agree with Dalya. I've played around with $0.99 a bit and had what looks like good success (about 3X as many sales). It was good for ranking but hard on the pocket book (my books are normally $3.99, so I have to sell almost 8 books to make up the difference). A good strategy is to drop the price to get the rankings up and make it more visible, then put the price back up and hope the sales continue because of the visibility. If it's at $0.99 and you're not moving many units, I wouldn't leave it there.
One of the books I've been playing with the price of, I put up to $4.99 near the beginning of the month and it hasn't hurt sales at all.

 

[dalya]

Just curious... how does author rank actually work vs the regular rankings each book has?

If I have 3 pen names, does a hit book moving a lot of units for one of those names benefit the other 2 pen names? Or just other books under that pen name?

KDP is a publishing account. The authors are separate. ;-)

 

[nikkarina]

I agree with Dalya. I've played around with $0.99 a bit and had what looks like good success (about 3X as many sales). It was good for ranking but hard on the pocket book (my books are normally $3.99, so I have to sell almost 8 books to make up the difference). A good strategy is to drop the price to get the rankings up and make it more visible, then put the price back up and hope the sales continue because of the visibility. If it's at $0.99 and you're not moving many units, I wouldn't leave it there.
One of the books I've been playing with the price of, I put up to $4.99 near the beginning of the month and it hasn't hurt sales at all.

Well that begs the question then...What is a good sells rank? I was at #38,000 today in the morning, now Im at 41,000 Is this a bad rank, or okay?

 

[dalya]

Well that begs the question then...What is a good sells rank? I was at #38,000 today in the morning, now Im at 41,000 Is this a bad rank, or okay?

In answer to your question, anything below #239 is a bad rank.

 

[nikkarina]

In answer to your question, anything below #239 is a bad rank.

Oh dang! I was super excited to ave gotten just that low... ahaha! Guess it takes time! I will just keep self promoting, maybe someday!

 

[SBJones]

I haven't been at self publishing for super long, but after more than a year and a half.  Book rank seems to only really matter once you start to hit the top 100 lists.  Depending on the genera, this can start happening around the 10,000 mark on overall ranking.  If I recall correctly.  I hit number 1 in sci-fi adventure but was still around 700-1,200 in the overall store.  I've only broke that 1,000 mark once on the paid side.

In other words, all books that are not in the top 100 lists are going to be hard for customers to find through casual browsing, unless they are looking specifically for the book.  Few people are going to scroll through 30+ pages of books before they find yours.  The difference between a book ranked 50,000 and one ranked 250,000 is about four sales over the course of two or three days.  Ranking of 30,000 or better is about where one book a day kicks in at.  Of course all these rank numbers can swing wildly depending on the season.  Spending months like Dec it will take a lot more compared to July when ten books sold will put you on the charts.