Has anyone played around with territory pricing?

[jjmainor]

I had one book all of a sudden start selling in Japan in November.  It was exciting until the payments were reported and I only got 1 cent USD per book.  Thankfully I realized I had mistakenly set the price ridiculously low in Japan before sending off an embarrassing "why is it" email to SW, and suddenly it got my wheels turning.  Amazon won't let you set the price below certain thresholds, and I can't do it in SW with the US price, but you can do it in other markets.  Now I'm playing around super low prices to see what can trigger sales in unusual markets.  I know there are many indies who feel cheap/free books are destroying the market, but I'm wondering if I can take a few pennies in some foreign markets where you don't normally sell.  Additionally, I got interested after seeing a suggestion that what counts as a low price for many of us, is a ridiculously high price in some countries like India.

Has anyone else experimented with discount pricing in foreign markets?  And what was the result?  How low did you go before garnering attention in places like Brazil or India?

[Ria Stone]

Jan 3, 2018 4:27:17 GMT -8 jjmainor said:

I had one book all of a sudden start selling in Japan in November.  It was exciting until the payments were reported and I only got 1 cent USD per book.  Thankfully I realized I had mistakenly set the price ridiculously low in Japan before sending off an embarrassing "why is it" email to SW, and suddenly it got my wheels turning.  Amazon won't let you set the price below certain thresholds, and I can't do it in SW with the US price, but you can do it in other markets.  Now I'm playing around super low prices to see what can trigger sales in unusual markets.  I know there are many indies who feel cheap/free books are destroying the market, but I'm wondering if I can take a few pennies in some foreign markets where you don't normally sell.  Additionally, I got interested after seeing a suggestion that what counts as a low price for many of us, is a ridiculously high price in some countries like India.

Has anyone else experimented with discount pricing in foreign markets?  And what was the result?  How low did you go before garnering attention in places like Brazil or India?

Very interesting, when I have time to look at my SW account, I will try some of those price adjustments :-) Thanks

[chelsfield]

JJ, that really is an interesting discovery. I guess first of all it is revealing of cost of living across countries, and how we here in 'the West' are a bit spoiled.

Also, you've got to wonder what readers in far-flung places all of a sudden see in our work. Is it just because it is supper cheap?

Finally, your comment about flooding the market. That really is just commerce, and big companies are just as likely to undercut others in that way. Think of the introduction of cheap paperbacks, sold in places other than bookstores. They had a huge impact on hardcover sales. Nobody wringing their hands about those sales now...

[djmills]

So far, I just set the US dollar price and let Amazon, SW, etc roll out to their sites automatically. But, I should set different prices for France,Italy, etc even though they are all Euro. And US price $2.99 does not equate Australia price $3.11, so I could trial a lower price in Australia and see how that goes.

One more part of marketing I need to look into this year. :-)

[chelsfield]

Good luck with that. I would be interested in hearing your results.

[jjmainor]

I find it interesting thinking back on the concept of the "Dime Store Novel." And last year I was reading a few books from the Guttenburg Project, one in particular came with covers from the 50's releases showing prices of 25 cents. Granted, a quarter in the 50s was the equivalent of $4 -4.50 today, but it's funny sometimes when you see the attitude that a book must be better because it costs more. I constantly wish I could set prices below 99cents without going free to capture that "romance" of 10cent or 25cent books.

[ChrisLAdams]

Jan 14, 2018 5:59:37 GMT -8 jjmainor said:

I find it interesting thinking back on the concept of the "Dime Store Novel.... I constantly wish I could set prices below 99cents without going free to capture that "romance" of 10cent or 25cent books.

Same here. I'd set all my little short stories at 25 cents and see what happens. 

[jjmainor]

Three months in and I get an email complaining about it...sheesh, it was a SW suggestion in the first place...

[djmills]

What is Smashwords saying? You can't alter the prices in other currencies? Or you have some priced too low?

[chelsfield]

JJ, you'll have to give us a bit more information to go on. Did you get something from SW?

[jjmainor]

Kobo complained the prices were too low. SW spun it in a number of ways, and while I'm just shrugging it off, I could go into an essay on why it's a good thing for them. Kobo has been a black hole for me; I'm not even moving free books with them, so it was a surprise when I had a book start to take off with them at a ridiculously low price. When I played around, I had entire series taking off, and I think that's what attracted Kobo's attention.

I just got another email from SW acknowledging my reply. Initially I reset all my prices, but decided this morning to pull the titles in question from distribution to Kobo as a potential strategy, so their reply was basically trying to convince me not to. Since I expressed exactly was I was about to put here, I'll just cut and paste what I wrote to them.



I actually opted out after changing the prices, so I shouldn't run into the issue elsewhere. I once found pulling my books from Amazon drove sales from Apple, and those sales vanished once I put my books back on Amazon, so I'm considering pulling out from Amazon once again. The decision to pull certain titles from Kobo is a strategy I think I may be able to make work.

Kobo has been one retailer where I can't even give books away for free, so there's no loss in pulling out. The experiment with super-low pricing came after an initial mistake. I was surprised when one book started selling through one of my worst performing retailers. The subsequent experiment to see if it was a fluke or not began to prove successful.

I understand the concern Kobo might have regarding credit card fees, but what I found was that customers were scooping up entire series, ringing an aggregate sale that should negate the concern with the fee. While I obviously have no access to their sales data, I would suspect my customers are tacking these books onto a larger sale, spreading the fee out across a larger purchase. There is also opportunity for them to encourage people to use up gift cards that only have a few cents left on them. Retailers do not include the purchase of gift cards in their sales reporting until those cards are spent on actual goods, so if customers forget about those cards with small denominations, those are potentially millions of dollars not being reported to their investors.

At the end of the day we're looking at a profit of one cent per book. It sounds foolish, it sounds bizarre, but even for them, taking one cent is better than taking nothing should the books leave as free books. But that is their choice. I look for opportunity to move books through unconventional means, From the beginning, I've always wished I could at least put a book on sale for 50 cents or 25 cents - I think it would be great if we could create coupons on SW for such deals. It would hearken back to the days when you could get a paperback for a quarter; you could create nostalgia for the "good ol' days" of the "dimestore novel."

But as I wax on about it, my one concern from the start has always been the knowledge that if it works like I think it could, it would become the next bandwagon with everyone doing it; then I would lose the niche. But still, retailers looking to compete with Amazon would benefit from making a penny per book from the catalogs of indie books that otherwise languish and make them nothing.

Sorry, if I went on. I just got to thinking about it last night, and can't stop brainstorming.

[jjmainor]

I know this is out of order, and I'm sorry for bouncing around like this, but I suddenly figured to just post the exchange for anyone who's curious in case you want to experiment... This was the initial email from SW.

Hi J.J.

Our partner Kobo alerted us to some unorthodox international pricing for a number of your titles (all listed below). Most of these books are priced around $.20 (US equivalent), and is discouraged by Kobo. Such small transactions are disadvantageous as customers are less inclined to charge such a small amount to their credit cards, which will result in lower sales for you.

Also, from a retailer's perspective, the cost to process the payment is more than the payment itself. Lastly, iBooks will round all prices up to the nearest .99 price point anyway.

For all these reasons, we suggest you return to Dashboard > Global Pricing and either release your price locks or make them a minimum of $0.99 (or whatever the equivalent is for the particulr country). Or, just make the books free.

Please let me know once you've made these changes, so I can let Kobo know. Thanks in advance for your cooperation.

[jjmainor]

My short and simple initial reply:

The issue should be corrected. Let me know if there is still a problem.

-J.J. Mainor

[jjmainor]

Their reply to my reply:

Thanks for getting back to me, J.J.

I see you chose to opt-out of Kobo instead of changing the international pricing. This is completely your prerogative, of course, but I'm not sure it was you best course of action. Opting-out of distribution to Kobo will simply make your books available to that many fewer readers.

As I previously mentioned, iBooks will wind up rounding your priced to the next .99 price point. Most of our other retailers will respect your global pricing requests, but they will eventually run into the same issues as Kobo: small transactions are disadvantageous as customers are less inclined to charge such a small amount to their credit cards, which will result in lower sales for you.

If you're looking to give users a discount on your books, I'd instead recommend publishing some box sets and/or book bundles. You'd then be cable to create oneprice for each bundle, and then you could discount them however you'd like for international markets.

Again, it's totally up to you, but I thought I'd mention the pluses and minuses here.

Anyway, please let me know if you have any questions.

[jjmainor]

One side note I didn't mention to them, but I have no luck with boxsets. No matter how much I mark them down over the collective price of the individual books, people still choose to buy the individual books and pay more. I thought it was just my own backwards experience, but I caught a thread on a Goodreads group a month or two back where readers kept saying they never bought the boxset if they already picked up the first book in a series free. It didn't matter if the boxset was cheaper even with the first book included again, the consensus was that everyone had an issue with "owning" that first book twice, even it was free and even if they saved money by getting it a second time in a boxset. People can be weird which is why I guess when I price a book ending in .49 and Apple rounds it up to .99, their customers just love paying the extra 50 cents (I know I've gone into detail on that experience in the past!).