NPL Publishing Consultants

Another area of intense questioning comes from the issues surrounding pricing eBooks and other downloadables.

The main issue seems to be the Kindle. Since Amazon requires anything you want to make available as an eBook on the Kindle, be priced at $9.99 or less… publishers are trying to figure out how to achieve this price point. In my opinion, they should be more focused on an overall eBook pricing strategy, and if Kindle fits into it, fine; if not, then that’s one venue that won’t be available. It isn’t usually too bright to fit yourself into one possible distribution program at the expense of your own program, bottom line, and future dealings in eBooks.

Knowing that Kindle seems (and only seems) to have the retail eBook market wrapped up (for the immediate moment), it would be wise to find a way to get your materials on board. This might require offering a completely different, shorter, abridged, or condensed product to this market… with an offer to credit the customer’s Kindle purchase price against a purchase directly through you for the complete eBook product.

You don’t change your Strategic here… just the specific products you make available.

Pricing eBooks and related materials is a result of developing a strategic for these products. This includes answering questions about free content products, downloadables for which you charge, and full fledged eBooks for which you also charge.

I have found that a good starting point for pricing, once you have these editorial and marketing issues settled is to look at a combination of 50% of the current ink and paper price, with a ‘cap’ of $19.95 or $20. You can stretch the cap to $22 or $23 in some cases… like a $50 book… but beyond that, use another strategy (below).

If you have a $19.95 trade paper, it should sell eBook, for $9.95 or $10. This number does fit into the Kindle program, so this title could be tested in that market as well as on your own site.

If you have a $29.95 hardcover, it should eBook for $14.95 or $15. No, it doesn’t fit into the Kindle program and your Strategic will determine that it shouldn’t be on the program if you can’t price it within your structure. Possibly, once sales diminish a little six or twelve months down line, you’ll be ok with reducing the eBook price to $9.95… but you don’t make marketing decisions based on a single vendor.

Yes, there are exceptions, but this article is providing guidelines, not legal exceptions to the guidelines. Do whatever you want… my work here is to give you some roadmaps and help you make money.

As I mentioned above, if you have a $49.95 paper or hardcover professional book, it should eBook for no more than $22 or $23.

What can you do if you have a $60 or $95 or $145 professional, technical, or other reference work and you want to eBook it? Strongly consider ‘parceling’ it out in ‘pieces’. Find some logical way to divide the information into ‘books’, and make the books available for under or at $20 each. This lessens the burden to the customer, and makes you the appropriate amount of revenue.

For example, let’s assume you have a professional book on a general subject, 800 to 1,000 pages, hardcover, selling for $100. Within that general subject you have roughly five specific topics you cover, and each has about 150-200 pages. By dividing and combining, you now have five ‘eBooks’. Each would sell as paperbacks for $20 ( 20 x 5 =100 ) so you CAN eBook them at $9.95 or $10 each.

What’s the advantage? Well, customers may not want to pay $50 for an eBook, but would gladly pay $10 each for the two sections of your reference that applies to their work. You still get full value (50% of ink and paper price) for what you sell. Interestingly, in this case, your new eBooks would also qualify for Kindle marketing, if you were so inclined to market that way. And, if a customer wants the whole reference, you can get the whole $50 price (or maybe offer it for $40, one eBook free to buy the whole series).

You don’t change your Strategic here… you change your products and marketing to fit your program, not the other way around or someone else’s program altogether. No, I am not saying to be inflexible… just don’t change your program with every new vendor or ‘great’ idea. Most will fit within your program, and for those that don’t give them an extra think as to how you can blend their approach with your program.

And, finally, what about your $7.95 paperback, or a $5.95 booklet? Well, half would be $3.95 and $2.95 respectively. No change here except if the booklet is an item intended to sell in bulk quantities… then it likely would not have been included as an eBook qualified product in the first place. But if each is intended to be sold one a one at a time basis, why not eBook them? Last time I looked, $3.95 could buy you a small sandwich and tea at a local diner… so maybe there is such a thing as a free lunch?