After looking at recent sales numbers and reading a whole slew of advice, I've decided to change the prices of my Applied Topology series. The first 5 books were all priced at $2.99. A couple of weeks ago I released the 6th book, A Revolution of Rubies, at $3.99. The slightly higher price hasn't hurt sales; if anything, it's selling better than the earlier books. I've also been looking at the results of an acquaintance's attempt to boost sales by dropping prices from $3.99 to $2.99. I've yet to hear his analysis of the results, but judging from Amazon rankings, the price drop doesn't seem to have made much difference.
So... I've decided to raise the price on Books 2-5 to $3.99. This is not so much about the slightly increased royalty (I'll make a whopping 65 cents extra on each sale, whee) as about perceptions of what the book is worth. I feel that raising the price to the average e-book price in the fantasy genre is a statement that I believe this is a good book and well worth $3.99. The $2.99 price is below average and seems to me to be slightly apologetic: please please please take a chance on this book!
Yeah, yeah, it's all in my head. What else? That's where I live!
At the same time, I've dropped the price of the first book in series, A Pocketful of Stars, to $0.99. I'm hoping that the lowered price will attract more new readers (who will then, of course, be so taken with the book that they'll rush right back to Amazon and download the other 5 books). I'd actually have liked to make it free, but at present that requires a little dance with Amazon that I don't have the patience for. I'd have to format it for publication on another platform, price it at $0.00 there, then write to Amazon and ask them to pretty please match the price on the other platform.
In a couple of months I'll report on the first results of this change... just in case anybody here is passionately interested in the details of ebook pricing.
