Pricing, decided properly
Two royalty thresholds do most of the deciding. Here's where they sit and how to price around them.
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For most ebooks: $3.99–$6.99. For most paperbacks: $12.99–$18.99, depending on page count. If you want one number to start from and adjust, ebook $4.99 is the least-wrong default in most non-fiction and genre fiction categories.
Kindle pays a 70% royalty on ebooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99, and 35% outside that range. The consequence is stark: a book at $2.99 earns roughly $2.09, while the same book at $1.99 earns about $0.70. You have to sell three copies at $1.99 to match one at $2.99. Below $2.99 you are not competing on price so much as donating margin.
The same cliff exists at the top. A $9.99 book earns about $6.99; at $10.99 the royalty drops to 35% and you earn about $3.85 — less money from a higher price. Unless your book is genuinely a reference work with a professional buyer, $9.99 is a ceiling rather than a milestone.
Paperbacks start from print cost, which is driven by page count. Print-on-demand takes its cut first, so a 300-page paperback has a hard floor beneath which you simply lose money. Work out the print cost, add the margin you want, then check the result against what comparable books in your category charge. If those two numbers are far apart, the problem is usually the page count or the trim size, not your ambition.
Before settling, look at the ten books that would sit beside yours: same category, similar length, published in the last two years. Not the bestsellers — the ordinary working books. That range is what your reader has been trained to expect. You can sit at the top of it with a strong cover and good reviews. Sitting far above it without those is how books stop selling.
Nothing here is permanent. Most authors test a price for 30–60 days, watch conversion rather than raw sales, and adjust once. What matters far more than the starting number is that your cover and description carry the price you've chosen — a $6.99 price with a $0.99 cover converts badly at any number.
If you'd rather see the whole picture — what publishing costs, what you'd earn per copy, and where you'd break even — the cost estimator lays it out in about thirty seconds, and marketing is where the price actually gets tested.
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For most books, $3.99–$6.99. Kindle pays 70% royalty between $2.99 and $9.99 and 35% outside it, so pricing inside that band is usually the single biggest financial decision you make.
As a launch tactic or a series opener, yes — it works. As a permanent price for a standalone, no: you earn about 35 cents a copy and readers read the price as a quality signal.
Start from print cost, which is driven by page count, add your margin, then sanity-check against comparable books in your category. If the numbers don't meet, the page count is usually the culprit.
Yes, at any time. Most authors test for 30–60 days and adjust once. Watch conversion rather than raw sales.
Not reliably. Below the genre's expected range, price starts signalling low quality. Cover and description influence conversion far more than a dollar either way.
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