Publishing E-Books For Dummies

Pricing Your Nonfiction E-Book

If you’ve written a nonfiction e-book, you have a lot of flexibility over pricing, which can make nearly impossible the task of determining the best price to maximize revenue.

A higher price doesn’t necessarily result in more income for you. E-book authors can profit considerably from a combination of a low e-book price and a high sales volume, or from a high price tag and the sale of only an e-book or two every month.

Looking at competing products

To start the process of pricing a nonfiction e-book, examine similar e-books on the market. If you’ve written a general interest book that you plan to sell on Amazon and in other stores, find the average price (and the lowest and highest price) of the top ten e-books in your book’s main category (or categories).

If you’ve written a specialized nonfiction e-book, see what price other publishers in your niche are charging. For example, most of the e-books that are written for the blogging world (one of my areas of expertise) cost between $29 and $49 (though some cost as much as $99). I’ve priced all my Blogger’s Guides at $29. Though the price seems steep, readers are quite willing to pay it because it’s a good value within that market.

You don’t necessarily have to follow standard pricing ...