How To Price Your EBook

You've written and compiled an ebook. Now you have to
decide how much to charge for it. Finding the right
price is essential to the success of your product. If
you charge too little, people will think it's of
little value, and they won't purchase it, or even it
they do buy your book, you will have to sell thousands
of copies to get to the point where you can begin to
see a profit.

If you price it too high when compared
with your competition, you will find yourself steadily
lowering the price, which will cause you all kinds of
new problems in the future. For example, if you sell
your ebook at first for $39.99, and later reduce it to
$24.95, don't you think the people who bought it for
$39.99 are going to be PISSED?

Choosing the right price for your ebook is one of the
most critical parts of the marketing process. The
first rule of pricing ebooks is to never underprice.
Determine the highest price your audience can afford,
and then if you find your book isn?t selling, you can
always reduce the price. Before you take that step,
make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on
the Internet and on websites.

The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never
forget that price is one of the factors that people
use in judging the value of your ebook ? before they
buy it. So always start with the highest price, and
then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an ebook is particularly difficult because
ebooks are a fairly new commodity. Since they are
digital, the value of an ebook is as confusing as the
understanding of what digital actually is to the
average layperson. This means that we must look at
ebooks in a different light in order to determine
their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let's look at the difference between a book in print
and an ebook. A printed book is an object you can hold
in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down
to the next generation. It is priced on factors such
as paper stock, design and production costs, and
marketing.

But the fact that unites ebooks and print books is
that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in
these books that have the ability to change, or
possibly transform, people's lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated
against the cost of paper and ink?

It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you
determine the cost of your ebook.

What should I charge for my ideas?

There are all different formulas and methods for
determining the correct price for your ebook. Let's
begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and
maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing
customers to your business or service, or to
establishing the credibility of your reputation. If
this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your
price on the low side. Some authors have even priced
their ebooks at a profit loss to draw a high number of
new customers. The key is to find a price that
maximizes your profits and the number of books you
sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are
looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term
customers are extremely likely to buy from you again
and again ? as long as the first ebook they buy is of
exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable ? and more
importantly NEW information, references, or techniques
? then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out
what your audience's need is for your ebook. For
example, does your book solve a particular problem? If
it does, and solves it in a way that hasn't been
written about in one hundred other ebooks, you will be
able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your
book solves a problem or answers questions in a new
and unique way, you should price your book as high as
you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way,
but bring in fewer customers.

Just make sure thequestion or problem that your book solves is one that
is important and relevant to the majority of your
market audience. If your ideas are not common
knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new
technique, you will be able to sell books at a high
price. Just be prepared for your competition to
undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your
book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is
temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at
this high price. So figure out in advance how long you
plan to offer your ebook at this high price, and when
that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw,
aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions
to their problems at a low price. If your book is
aimed at solving one particular problem rather than
general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the
highest price the market will bear to bring in the
largest profits, and plan to discount the book a
number of times throughout the year.