Guest Post by Armand Rosimilia

Today I'm serving up a guest post by Armand Rosamilia. I interviewed Armand once before. He's a talented man: publisher of Rymfire, author and all around interesting guy. See for yourself~

What eBook Price Is Freedom?

Armand Rosamilia

That title sounds pretty epic, eh? Now, to disappoint you…

Today I want to point out eBook pricing. I'm not going to get into the pricing models the Big Six Publishers employ, because we can read almost daily what that is doing to their business. I'm focusing on the little guy… me and you.

There have been so many different ideas thrown around, especially since the KDP Select program from Amazon went live.

Who's right? Who screwed up their sales? Who are the Masters of all this? That's the fun part, because it all seems to change monthly, weekly, and sometimes daily.

I've had days where 18 different titles will have new sales (I have over 40) and I'll get in 39 sales. The next day I get 6 sales, and I can't for the life of me figure out what I did differently or if I did.

But does pricing make that big a difference? I see many well-established writers (and, let's face it, the ones who think they are) pricing their eBooks at $6.99 and telling everyone they're getting nice, healthy sales at that price.

For several mid-list authors (their term, not mine) I read their blog and see them pricing anywhere from $4.99 to $9.99, mostly books that had been traditionally published in the past, reverted back to them, and now they're charging just slightly less than their traditional publisher did.

I have my own opinion on eBook pricing. Guess what? I'm going to share it with you. Always remember there are exceptions to the rule of pricing, whether it's for genre, length, author recognition, or a hundred other factors.

I generally use two prices: 99 cents for shorter works (under 10,000 words) and $2.99 for longer works (usually my novellas). Simple as that.

Again, I've dabbled with other prices: $1.99 for a couple of short story collections before dropping them to 99 cents and watching my sales rise, and $3.99 for the Undead Tales zombie anthology, which is one of my stronger sellers. I've even gone up to $4.99 for my Extreme Undead Collection, but that is 100k and has four zombie novels in one release.

But $2.99 is a nice price to sit at, in my opinion. It's a few cents more than an impulse buy (like a 99 cent eBook is) but, if it interests the potential reader, the price is right. When you're writing niche stories like I generally do, with zombies, your potential readers are in a smaller but rabid circle, and you need to lock them in and keep them coming back for more, especially in a series.

I'll keep experimenting, and I hope other authors do as well. $2.99 seems to be the average price right now for indie authors, and I think it's fair as an author and a reader. I've never purchased an eBook over $2.99 to read, but my Kindle is crammed with $2.99 stories waiting to be read.

What will the future hold? Free eBooks with advertising? Rising costs for eBooks? A brand new system? The crash of technology and the return of stone tablets?

It's a great time we live in.

Armand Rosamilia

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Believe it or not, I'm doing this guest blog tour in support of my latest releases.

Want to know more about the "Dying Days" series? Want to win free eBooks and maybe print books of them? My contest is simple: e-mail me at armandrosamilia (at) gmail (dot) com with DYING DAYS in the subject line and I'll enter you into the daily giveaway… also, post a comment here and you get another chance… follow my blog at http://armandrosamilia.com for yet another chance, and friend me on Twitter (@ArmandAuthor) and simply post DYING DAYS to me, and you'll get another shot… nice and easy, right? If I get enough people joining in the giveaway there will be a print book given away that day!

"Dying Days" series information can be found here: http://armandrosamilia.com/dying-days-series/

Thanks, Armand!

♥Stacey