Although, according to Author Earnings, Amazon is responsible for 83 per
cent of ebooks sold in the US and 87 per cent in the UK, its share is only 60 per cent in Australia and 57 per cent in Canada.
Not exact matches
But what if it turned out that you could make more money each month by
selling the
ebook at 99
cents instead
of the $ 6.99 or whatever you thought it was worth?
There are so many schools
of thought on this topic, and essentially with little overhead, pricing an
eBook at 99
cents and
selling exponentially more than at $ 2.99 does have its benefits.
Right now, there's a chance you aren't even as good as that self - published author on Amazon who has
sold five copies
of his 99
cents ebook.
I'm glad I decided to publish more than the Goblin Brothers, because I've
sold fewer copies
of those children's stories than anything else I've published, even though the
ebook is only 99
cents.
From the comments I've read all over, most
of the Select authors are authors who had a hard time
selling their work for 99
cents, so now they are giving their
ebooks away.
It almost seems like Amazon has it backwards, as they are commissioning a live review
of each title in the Kindle Singles division while knowing that those titles
sell for as little as 99
cents, while their
ebook division can charge far more for a title but does not provide the same attention to detail as the Kindle Singles.
Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that Amazon is on course to have
sold a whopping 8 million
of its
ebook reading devices in 2010 - at least 60 per
cent more devices than was predicted.The 8 million figure... Read more
In addition, gifting
of Kindle books was up by 175 per
cent on Amazon.com year on year, and the two
of the top five
ebooks sold were self - published through the online retailer's Kindle Online Publishing scheme.
The price
of a self - published
ebook title
selling for $ 2.99 at other outlets was reduced inexplicably by Amazon for some time to 99
cents, although no rival site was underselling it.
In this case the actual file size
of the
eBooks was 1.1 MB, but the delivery fee will be calculated for 0.4 MB, so about 6
cents per
eBook sold.
It's available as an
eBook on Amazon for 99
cents (at the special URL
of GodIsLogical.com), but the primary goal is not to
sell it.
If
ebook sales accounted for 1/4 to 1/3
of your copies
sold, I think you might find it harder to swallow that 75
cents per copy.
The Nook
ebook reader has been Amazon's hottest competition in the US, with 27 per
cent of books
sold in the country coming from Barnes and Noble, the company said.
Amazon makes it difficult to
sell your
ebook for $ 0.00, so setting the price at 99
cents and running lots
of giveaways may be the least expensive way to get your book out to potential readers.
Though it's not possible to calculate how much money an author with that many sales has made without knowing the price
of each
ebook, every writer who has
sold this number
of books has made between a low
of $ 17,500 (if every book is priced at only 99
cents, for a 35 % royalty rate) to a high
of $ 350,000 (at the highest rate that KDP allows — $ 9.99, with a 70 % royalty rate).
That's how self published science fiction writers have managed to compete heads - up with the major trades, and there are a dozens
of self published science fiction writers who are earning a very good living
selling a mix
of 99
cent and $ 2.99
ebooks.
What's significant in relation to Locke hitting the million - seller Kindle
ebook mark is that it showcases that while choosing the Kindle Direct Publishing route removes agents and publishers from the equation, Locke makes less money with his 99 -
cent gambit than he would
selling the same number
of books with a traditional publisher.