Book Cover Coaching: Price Your Book to Sell

How to Price Your Book:
Use These 3 Factors to Help You Decide

By Susan Kendrick

Pricing is one of the most important decisions you will make for your book, and one of the final decisions in the book cover process. You can determine the price based on three factors: competition, page count, and printing cost. Think of these as the three C's. Ideally, all three of these factors work together to help you arrive at a price that's best for your book.

Pricing is just one component of your book's back cover. For a complete 10-Step guide to creating your entire back cover "elevator speech" for your book, please download a complimentary copy of our easy-to-use 17-page report, "From Back Cover to Bestseller."

Competition
If your book will be shoulder to shoulder with other books on Amazon, in bookstores, catalogues, book clubs, etc., one way to decide on price is to do some comparison shopping. What is the price range for other books on your topic, for a similar audience, and of similar length? Determine the low and high end of that range, and then either price your book comfortably in the middle or slightly higher.

Price and perception of quality are closely linked, so if you charge too little, you risk undermining your book's credibility. In other words, if your book is one of the cheapest on your topic, it may be assumed that your book doesn't have as much to offer as other, competing titles. On the other hand, if you price your book at the highest end of the price range, depending on your target audience, you risk losing buyers who may not be ready to spend that much. Of course, some authors and publishers will intentionally price their books high to enhance the perception of value and exclusivity of certain titles. Knowing your competition and the buying habits of your target audience will help you find your best price fit for your market.

Page Count
The following calculations come from the website of Morgan James Publishing, whose author-friendly Entrepreneurial Publishing™ model is a great resource for self-publishing authors looking for the book marketing perks of working with a publisher. Here is the MJ breakdown of how to calculate the price of your book based on both manuscript word count and page count. They note that the price is determined in part by competing titles, and that you can increase or decrease the price of your book for competitive reasons.

Manuscript . . . . Page Count . . . . Recommended
Word Count . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Price Range
20,000 (or less) . . . . . 75 (or less) . . . . . . $ 8.95 - $10.95
40,000 . . . . . . . . . . . 120 . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.95 - $13.95
60,000 . . . . . . . . . . . 180 . . . . . . . . . . . . $13.95 - $16.95
80,000 . . . . . . . . . . . 240 . . . . . . . . . . . . $15.95 - $19.95
100,000 . . . . . . . . . . 300 . . . . . . . . . . . . $17.95 - $21.95
120,000 . . . . . . . . . . 360 . . . . . . . . . . . . $20.95 - $23.95
140,000 . . . . . . . . . . 420 . . . . . . . . . . . . $22.95 - $26.95
160,000 . . . . . . . . . . 580 . . . . . . . . . . . . $25.95 - $29.95
180,000 . . . . . . . . . . 540 . . . . . . . . . . . . $27.95 - $31.95
200,000 . . . . . . . . . . 600 . . . . . . . . . . . . $29.95

Printing Cost
The following section on estimated printing costs is from Dan Poynter's website:

But what does it cost to publish? Let's compare prices for traditional ink-press printing, PQN (Print Quantity Needed) and POD (Print-On-Demand, one book at a time such as DocuTech). We will compare a softcover (perfect bound) 144 page 5.5 x 8.5 book with black text and a four-color cover. Press (ink on paper): $1.55 each but you have to print at least 3,000 to get a price this low. So, your print bill will be $4,650. See below. Digital printer (short run): 500 copies for $2.80 each or a print bill of $1,400, or 100 copies for $5.17 each and a print bill of $517. POD (single copies): May run $6 to $10 and are often bundled with other services. Print-On-Demand is a good option when a book has run its course, your inventory is exhausted and you still receive orders for a couple of copies a month. Rather than invest in inventory, you can have books made one-at-a-time as needed.

Dan notes that for hardcover books, printing traditional hard or "case" binding runs about $1.00 extra per book.

Like so much else about your book cover, pricing is also about positioning and perception of quality. And, as you can see above, book pricing also needs to take into account production costs and other profit-loss calculations. Use the three pricing factors above to confidently decide what's right for you and your book.

Do you have questions about the book cover for your book?
Please give us a call at 715-634-4120 or email info@WriteToYourMarket.com

© Copyright 2007, Susan Kendrick, Write to Your Market, Inc. All Rights Reserved.