Price Experimentation

[ahpellett]

I'd like to hear from those of you who have experimented with pricing and the impact on sales numbers (not dollars).

Questions I want to explore include:

• What happens if one increases the price? Is there a perceived increase in value?
  
• Is there an optimal word count to price point (I need to go back and read Mark C's post on that).
  
• If the price is set at FREE (not including coupons) are you stuck with that forever?
  
• How long did you experiment with a price before moving on to another or settling?
  

Feel free to add your own observations on related topics.

[Nathaniel Phillips]

Did you read this?

www.smashwords.com/about/beta

Scroll down to the June 22, 2012 entry. It is about book pricing versus number of books sold versus profit. It might be helpful.

[Nathaniel Phillips]

I should have added, there is a link to the slideshow that Mark gave which includes this data. The whole slideshow is interesting, but if you want to jump to the part about book pricing and sales it begins around slide 50.

www.slideshare.net/Smashwords/how-data-driven-decisionhow-datadriven-decisions-might-help-authors-reach-more-readers

[anita]

I played around with my pricing... When I first started writing erotica for Smashwords, I priced the first of each series for free and each subsequent installment ranged from 99 cents up to 2.99 based upon the length.

However, when I started uploading my work to Amazon, I knew that those lower prices wouldn't work well there. I kept the first of each series free but charged 2.99 for each subsequent installment. For August, I am seeing very few sales on Smashwords, but I'm making far more money with Amazon and Barnes & Noble. For me, the loss of Smashwords sales is a small thing when I look at the big picture.