Pricing

Apparently, there's way more to self-publishing than I first imagined.

It figures, though.  I'm a blog author.  I type stuff out, glance over it for glaring punctuation and grammatical errors, hit "publish", and - WHAM - my post is out in the world for everyone to read.  On a day when I suffer from writer's block, it takes me an hour per post.

Unfortunately, with actual books (even if said books are fictional novelettes), publishing takes a little bit (hehe, a lottle bit) more time and effort for formatting, font choices, and - ugh ugh ugh - cover design.  One of the biggest issues that I've been musing over is book pricing and the differences between 99 cent books, 98 cent books, and 97 cent books.

I know, I know, one cent differences.
Think it's absurd?
Hold your laughter.

As I've been reading through "Kindle Publishing Gold: How to Make Money Online Self-Publishing" by R.L. Adams, I've realized that there are huge psychological aspects behind these three prices.  Summarized from Adams' book, here's my best interpretation of these three prices' deeper meaning.

~ ~ ~

99 CENTS:
Most people know this little secret.  Price your books at 99 cents and people will buy because they automatically tend to ignore the stuff after the decimal point.  (You know, like that one time that you bought that pint of ice cream for $4.99 and thought you were getting a steal - fifty cents per half cup of ice cream! - only to realize that you actually bought a pint of a vanilla-flavored brain freeze for five whopping bucks.)
However, even though people know this secret, no one really seems to be objecting to it.  According to studies presented in Adams' book, 60.7% people will still prefer to buy products that end with the number 9.

98 CENTS:
Ooo, we just got one cent cheaper!  Now we're hitting the real discounts!
Heheh.
Actually, since people ignore the stuff after the decimal point, they're still ignoring the one extra cent markdown.  That is, unless if your target audience is extraordinarily price-sensitive, like Wal-Mart's customers are.

97 CENTS:
Strangely enough, people do tend to notice the three cent discount (97) even if they don't notice the two cent discount (98), simply because 97 cents is a clear break-away from the traditional 99 cents and the less-traditional-but-still-frequent 98 cents.
However, this attention isn't necessarily good.  97 cents implies that the author is cunningly calculating and that the book price is a little too exact.  Some people might be turned away by that sort of forethought, feeling as if they're walking into a pricing trap.

~ ~ ~

Intriguing, isn't it?

Anyway, with all of this help, I've decided that the price for The Immortals is to be CHEAP dollars and INEXPENSIVE cents...which, in more or less words...is to say I haven't decided yet.  (No more than two dollars, anyway.  :P)

Last note: R.L. Adams' book is a fantastic, practical read for amateur authors like me.  If you've got a finished work and want to throw it into the internet world just to see how it does, I would highly advise that you buy his novel (which is free on the Kindle, I believe).

And, as always--

Write on!
Clove