[Sam Rivers]

I am busy raising the prices on my books since I haven't raised them for a couple of years. I think they will sell just as well at a new price.

Do you raise your book prices?

 

[David VanDyke]

It seems like ebook prices are stuck. Inflationary pressures should push them upward over time, but there is downward pressure from competition, oversupply, and digital goods trends. So they seem to be stable over the last 10 years, more or less.

Seems like 3.99 or 4.99 are the sweet spots. If you go above the psychological $5 mark, things change. Some can do it, some can't.

 

[alhawke]

Yeah, $3.99 to $4.99. Or series starters = free or $.99. Occasionally I'll experiment and price higher for a couple months, but I haven't seen better revenue. You can experiment and follow your sales.

Indies have gotten stuck at selling at lower prices and I think, unfortunately, readers expect it. Like the ever-present free or 99c sale promotion. Why so little? Why not $1.99? Just the way it sells at the moment.

 

[jb1111]

Supply and demand.... it's the nature of economics, and with eBooks, it shouldn't be any different.

 

[Crystal_]

I price to stay competitive within my genre/niche. Right now, that's mostly 3.99 and 4.99. I raised prices on one series to 4.99 two years ago and that did well, but I haven't raised them since.

Maybe when I have new covers for my 3.99 series, ones that look more like covers on books that cost 4.99.

If you raise prices and sales go down, you can drop prices again. It's not a big deal. I know that's easy for me to say, because they're not my sales, but it's really is unlikely to leave a permanent mark.

 

[Sam Rivers]

I finished raising the prices. The lowest prices are $3.99 and the highest prices are $6.99.

I think readers choose the book because they are interested in reading it rather than buying it because of a cheap price.

Raising the price sometimes puts your books in a different bracket so I may get new people looking at my books.

I don't give any books away since I don't think it is worthwhile.

 

[Gareth K Pengelly]

Mine are 2.99. My books are mostly pretty short - 50-100k, and it's an 11 book series, so would feel cheeky asking for more.

I'm always happy to have my mind changed though.

 

[thomas88]

My long book is $6.99 and I just dropped my short one from 3.99 to 2.99, so we're in a similar bracket.  I too haven't seen much benefit from giving them away, though I will probably continue to do so from time to time.

 

[KevinH]

In my most popular series, the first book is $4.99 and the rest are $5.99; it's been that way for a couple of years.  I initially started out with them a buck cheaper, but eventually bumped it up a dollar due to inflation and related costs increasing. (The cost of book promotion sites, for instance, has increased exponentially over the years - I even posted an article about it on my blog.) Readers never complained about the increase; in fact, a couple have suggested that I raise prices again.

 

[toddhicks209]

I generally keep my prices flat and charge $2.99 for most of my books. Where I can, I start selling my books at a discount.