Ebooks have forever changed reading and book buying. Yet, unlike print books, ebook pricing remains a variable factor.
Ebooks have no one-size-fits-all price point, especially between US and UK readers.
Authors should consider various factors to strike the right balance between perceived value and their royalty earnings.
Understanding reader expectations of price is crucial, as book buyers tend to associate ebooks with a much lower cost than paperback books.
What is the best ebook price point?
There was a long battle between the major publishers and Amazon to establish a $14.99 price point for traditionally published titles.
But now, it seems the traditional book publishing industry has settled down in this regard.
However, for self-publishing authors, the price of your book on Amazon is still fluid.
A list price of $2.99 is very common for self-published ebooks.
This is because it is the lowest price you can set to earn 70% royalty from Amazon KDP.
However, setting a higher price can have a negative effect on selling your book.
Many authors try setting the price at the minimum, which is $0.99.
But at the reduced royalty rate of 35%, you need to sell a lot of ebooks to make any money.
There are many pricing strategies you can try for ebooks.
However, one you might not have considered is the variation in perceived value in different markets.
International differences in ebook pricing
I stumbled upon an interesting article on Techcrunch about ebook prices. It adds a very surprising element to the perception of value in ebook prices.
In general, ebook buyers in the UK seem to have a totally different value system from buyers in the US.
To put it simply, UK ebook buyers love cheap.
Look at the graphs below to compare the price points in each market.
You can see that ebooks in the range of 2.99 and 9.99 sell quite well in the US.
But in the UK, ebooks sell in a much lower price range of 1.99 or less.
Again, when it comes to total revenue, the US is more even across price points. For the UK ebook market, revenue decreases rapidly as the ebook price increases.
Rethink your ebook pricing strategy
These graphs show clearly that self-publishing authors might want to rethink how they price their ebooks for each market.
US ebook buyers appear to accept a wider price range as good buying value, and even increasing substantially at the $10.00 mark.
However, UK ebook buyers seem to be reluctant to pay much more than £0.99.
Perhaps the UK Amazon Kindle Store could be called the ebook dollar shop.
For most self-published authors, I suppose you set the price of your ebook in $US on KDP.
Then, you let the automated system on KDP calculate the price in the various currencies for each of the international Kindle Stores.
However, there is a manual override to this system. You can set your prices differently for currencies and countries from the “Edit ebook pricing” tab.
You can also set your international prices manually on Smashwords, Draft2digital, and Google Play.
Take a look at your price settings, particularly for the UK market.
Summary
If you are not selling many ebooks in the UK, the difference in perceived value on either side of the Atlantic may explain why.
Perhaps you could try experimenting with your UK ebook prices to see if it can help boost your sales.
Apart from the differences between the US and the UK, changing your ebook price is always worth considering as part of your book promotion strategy.
If you are enrolled in Amazon KDP Select, your price can affect your perceived value for Kindle Unlimited readers.
A higher-priced ebook will always seem more attractive than a lower price.
You can also consider changing your print book price to make your ebook look like much better value.
If you set your ebook price at the time you published it and have not changed it since, you might want to reconsider.
Yes, you can offer free ebooks and Kindle Countdown Deals to help promote your book.
But you want to sell ebooks, so competitively pricing your ebook is vital to your chances of success.
Related Reading: What’s Your Amazon Ebook Pricing Strategy For Kindle Unlimited?
Prices of eBooks is only part of the problem Derek. As you know, sales of eBooks in the UK are always much less than in the US. Compare the sales of eBooks with paper or hardback in the UK and the eBook loses out every time. Sad to say, but its a fact that my fellow Poms would much rather hold a real book in their hands, written by a ‘known’ traditionally published writer, than read an electronic file, written by someone who is not, and probably never will be, a household name…
The current value of the pound is $1.45, which shifts the British graph to somewhat higher values [shifts it to the right] if the horizontal axis is corrected to dollars. Also, countries with smaller media incomes will likely be even more price sensitive.