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I’m not really a numbers type of guy to be honest, but I did find this Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords) slideshare presentation quite interesting.
The first interesting point for me, was how the length of your book effects your chances of selling. (Page 37-47) I’m guessing this mainly includes statistics for fiction, but I’m sure the same would hold true for nonfiction also, although word count would likely be less.
On a side note, one of the things that struck me as strange about this slideshow, was just how perverted Mark Coker is with his questioning towards readers! For example:
Do romance readers prefer different lengths?
and…
Do erotica readers prefer longer or shorter?
Surely there’s a time and place for this type of question Mark!
Anyhow, another thing I found interesting was on page 52, and you should take this into account on your own Amazon Kindle book pricing strategy…
As you might expect, a 99c book will outsell most other price points, no surprises there. What was interesting however was the drop in sales for books priced between $1.00 and $1.99, and then the steep rise in sales for books priced between $2.00 and $2.99.
6.2 sales per day at the $2.99 price point at Amazon KDP’s 70% = $12.97 a day on average.
Judging by the graph in Marks presentation it looks like a $3.99 book sells around 5 units a day, working out at around $13.96 .
A $4.99 book at 3.4 sales per day = $11.88
A $5.99 book at 3.6 sales per day = $15.09
So we can safely assume that the best price point for sheer income is a $5.99 book right?
Although this may work just fine in some niches, it’s not necessarily right every time to my mind!
If your chosen categories are swamped with free, and 99c books, that high price point might push you off the edge of the top 100 lists and into the eBook black hole. The only ways around this that I can see are external promotions, or a good keyword grounding on Amazon itself.
On top of this, if you are monetizing the back end of your books, or building an email list like Steve Scott recommends, then you are probably cutting yourself off from a lot of readers, and with it, extra income and promotion for your other titles.
I’m speaking here from a nonfiction authors point of view, and fully expect you guys to rip me to shreds if my thinking is wrong… How else will I learn to sell more books! 😉 Make a comment below to let me know what you think…
P.S. If you would like to see how I measure the market for pricing, you can find more information in my own Kindle book: CreateSpace and Kindle Self Publishing Matrix – Writing Nonfiction Books That Sell Without Marketing
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Really interesting stats, I wonder if having a price point that is less common for your genre could be beneficial. If your category is swamped with $.99 books a $3.99 price point might be seen as an indicator of quality.