Is Amazon Kindle Store The 99 Cent Store

It is amazing how many $.99 cents ebooks are in the Kindle section of Amazon. Many independent authors have trapped themselves at that price point as they attempt to roll up big sales numbers. Dan Brown's new ebook is priced at $14.99 and of course he gets that all day long. I priced my latest full length ebook a $4.99 which is not a lot, but it is 5 times the $.99 cent competition. Unless the authors pull back, the the independent author benchmark will be $.99.

I can't see pricing a 70,000 word or more full-length work at less than $1 and clearing $.35 per unit, but on the other hand that is the competitive landscape.

It depends upon how many sales the 99c price tag generates, DT. If a free ebook that has 4,000+ downloads generates a hundred paid sales at 99c, which net 35c per download, the profit is $35. If priced at the 70% royalty rate of $2.99, just seventeen sales would produce a profit of $35.58. The extra readers that the 99c price tag generate are not required because the book has already reached thousands of readers, who downloaded the free book.

Once downloaded, there is no price tag attached to the books. Readers select free and paid for books from their list of ebooks and read them according to mood not according to price tag.

My publisher priced Ghost Orchid and it sells for around $4.99 at Amazon.com with Amazon applying a discount.

I priced Arirang at $2.99 for a 500 page book. I have sold fewer Arirang than Ghost Orchid based on customer selection. Arirang had been priced higher and I lowered the price. Sales did not pick up from making the price lower.

I have a 99 cent short story for which I did not promotion and the sales show it....

I have a $2.99 cent short story collection that is siilar to the 99 cent experience.


What is promoted sells, regardless of how priced. When Arirang was $35.00 I sold many books at book signings. It was the right atmosphere as a new release and my own enthusiasm was high.

It is interesting because I profit over 10 times from one sales as a $.99 sale does. The $.99 book would have to outsell my book by 10 times in volume, and they may, but I don't think they are earning any more. I have also noticed that a lot of the authors are cranking out series to keep the same customers coming back. I have read some reviews where readers are growing tired because story lines never conclude and turn into a series of cliffhangers until the next book come out. I think that the $.99 craze will hit the wall at some point.

It's all the changing and freedom to publish anything. Chaos comes first, and out of chaos some sense of order will prevail - unknown at the present time.

The only thing I would sell for $.99 is a short story. I have two currently and sales of these over the past three months is zero. My short story collection at $3.99 fares little better--one or two sales per month. My book of poetry does even worse at $1.99. On the other hand, my intellectual property book sells consistently 5-10 copies a month at $8.99 (and a couple of copies in soft cover at $18.99). The non-fiction legal reference market is tiny in comparison to the fiction market and I don't do anything at all to promote the law book, and precious little to promote the others.

Price alone will not sell books (with the exception of well established authors perhaps) as there are too many free books about (the good, the bad, and the truly repugnantly ugly) for anyone to read. Add to to that the great free books downloadable from your local library and it is amazing that any of us are selling any books at all without massively costly and/or time consuming marketing efforts.

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It depends upon how many sales the 99c price tag generates, DT.

Shelagh, you keep repeating that anytime someone brings up price. Yes, we know that if we sell thousands of books cheap, we'll make more than selling a few hundred books more expensive. What's the relevance to the larger point DT is making here?

Which is (as I understand him, and have said myself) that when millions of people are giving away their books or selling them for .99c, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to sell any book at any price.

LC wrote:

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It depends upon how many sales the 99c price tag generates, DT.

Shelagh, you keep repeating that anytime someone brings up price. Yes, we know that if we sell thousands of books cheap, we'll make more than selling a few hundred books more expensive. What's the relevance to the larger point DT is making here?

Which is (as I understand him, and have said myself) that when millions of people are giving away their books or selling them for .99c, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to sell any book at any price.

Okay, I'll try to explain this again. DT is asking if the independent author benchmark will be $.99 and books priced higher won't sell. The answer is no, this is not going to happen.

For one thing, Amazon only give a 35% royalty for books priced under $2.99. This is a business decision, and not to facilitate authors' ebook sales. The difference between 99c and 35c is 64c (Amazon's cut). The difference between $2.99 and $2.09 is 90c (Amazon's cut). Amazon can afford to give 70% royalty and still make more money on a $2.99 ebook than a 99c ebook. Everything on Amazon KDP is to maximise Amazon's profits; if authors make a living out of selling books, they do it off their own efforts and not because of Amazon's business practices.

The free books and 99c books are used to get more customers to buy Kindles and fill them with cheap books. It's up to authors themselves to tailor the pricing of their books to maximise their profits. Setting the price at 99c because everyone else does, won't necessarily give the greatest return. Erotica sells like hot cakes. Thousands of sales @ 99c, is a good marketing ploy. Literary fiction is a hard sell. Pricing books at 99c will not produce much revenue.

If you saw Publishers Weekly today you know that Amazon has opened a whole new market for fan authors who write stories about characters already published by someone else. This new publishing venture will include a 99 cent section for short stories. These will be vetted and under contract to amazon.com. Similar to the old Amazon Shorts but 99 cent ebooks and in the specific fan genre. The fan author gets a cut, the original developer of the characters get a cut and Amazon gets a cut. whew!

It's an interesting development, DK, and one that backs up my previous post. This is not a creative venture; it's a business venture. Fan fiction sells. Readers are keen to read more of the same -- and they don't really care who the author is. They know what they like and they want more of it. Amazon are about to give them their fix.

I prefer to just give my book away rather than have it over-priced or under-priced.