Should you sell your Kindle edition at 99p?

The answer is no, or maybe yes. And we're going to explore why that is.

Does a 99p list price drive more sales or does it simply devalue your product?

One of the big questions when publishing your first novel on KDP is how to price it.

Let’s recap quickly how the 70/30 royalty split works with KDP pricing:

• Books priced at 99p (or cents) qualify for 30% royalties (30p on average after the delivery charge)

• Books priced at £1.99 or higher qualify for 70% royalties (£1.34 on average after delivery charges)

This means, immediately, at 99p, you need to sell 5x the number of books to hit the same royalties figure. As such, the question is: will a reduction of £1.00 in the price result in five times more people converting?

The answer, simply, is no.

Why price at 99p?

Pricing at 99p does offer a little less risk to readers in terms of cost. But Amazon also offer a full refund option on books within 7 days. So they can spent £99 on a book, and get that money back with no risk, no questions asked.

There’s even a little issue on Kindle right now where speed readers will buy Kindle books, read them, then return them within 7 days to get their money back. Darn, as if it wasn’t tough enough, eh?

When someone asks me if they should go at 99p or £1.99, my question to get them thinking is always — what percentage of readers checking out the product page wouldn't buy at £1.99, but would buy it at 99p? Remember the 5x rule.

If 100 people check out the book page, and 20 of them like it enough to potentially buy — and all 20 of those would buy at 99p, but only 4 would buy if it was £1.99, then 99p is a viable choice. If not, then it’s not. And in my experience, I haven’t seen that as the ratio.

And when you’re starting off, with no reviews, traffic, and a modest ad budget, the big numbers are hard to come by. So really, how many people are even going to consider buying it in these early stages? Are you kneecapping yourself before you even start by putting yourself in a position where you need 5x more sales to make the same money as you would from a £1 price increase?

Price Increases and Reader Drop-Off

There is certainly a portion of the buying readers on Kindle who will only buy 99p books. That much I know for sure — though I also know that’s not a big portion of paying buyers.

But if they only buy 99p books, what happens when they see book 2, 3, 4 in the series are £1.99, or £2.99? Because really, 99p books (with a 30p kickback) aren’t sustainable when it will cost around £4 or £5 to shift just one of them (Angel Maker is at £1.99 and even with 10,000 reviews and a bestseller tag, I still have a 250%-ish ACOS (Advertising Cost Of Sale)).

The answer is that they won’t buy. So you’ll see a big drop-off in Read-Through Sales (RTS) — which is the percentage of people who buy book 1 and then buy book 2 organically.

So, even if you manage to get readers through the door at 99p, once you increase the price through the series, you’ll lose them anyway.

Devaluing Your Product

KDP is a serious marketplace. But there’s no barrier to entry. Within the Kindle store, you’ve got the Stephen Kings and James Pattersons (titans of trad) jostling for space with JD Kirk and LJ Ross (goliaths of indie), who also vie for room with the likes of me (mid-chart indies) and the mid-chart trad authors. Then, you’ve got new, serious authors who are self-pubbing but really want to make a career out of it, who are dedicated to their craft.

But then, there are hobbyists. People who have written one book, not considered the gravity of the world they’re entering, and who maybe haven’t put as much time, or effort, or money into things like editing, proofing, blurb, cover, their author site, etc, etc. For them, it’s just for fun, or something that they’ve always wanted to do. And they’re very likely to throw their book out at 99p because they think it’ll attract more readers. So if you price yours the same, you put yours next to theirs in the way it's perceived by potential buyers. Which is not something you want, right?

I’m not being mean or ragging on those authors in the slightest, but what I am saying is that once the book is done and being prepped to be published, you need to leave your emotions at the door and put on your business hat. If you want to sell books and climb the charts, you need to be prepared for the reality that being number one means taking that spot from someone else. From relegating them to second place.

Your artist half is finished. Now you’re a salesperson selling a product. And your goal is selling as many of that product as you can, sad as that may seem at first. Putting your book out at 99p tells prospective readers a lot about it.

But mostly, that you think it’s only worth 99p.

The Lowered Expectations Trap

Lots of people say — at 99p readers may have lowered expectations, so 5* reviews will be easier to score! Well, that’s not a good thing, either. If your book needs to be 99p to get 5* reviews, then it’s only a good book for 99p, not a good book. If it’s good, it’ll get good reviews at £1.99 or £2.99, too.

It’s easy to think that 99p will be a great starting point, but generally, the cons outweigh the pros —

• 30p royalty per sale vs. £1.34 royalty

• Lowered RTR with subsequent, more expensive books

• Risk of devaluing your own product

• No room to discount with a Countdown deal (I’ll cover this in more detail another time)

You can split buyers into two categories — those who will only download free books, and those who are willing to pay.

If someone likes the look of a book, they’ll pay £1.99 for it. A 99p price point won’t do what you think it will, which is why I always advise authors to go in at £1.99 at least for the first book of their first series.