By Laura Drake

I’ve pondered the topic of book pricing for a long time. It makes me uneasy because, though I’ve thought a lot about it, I haven’t come up with a definitive answer.

Everyone knows it’s hard to make a decent living as an author.

Heck, most don’t make over $2k a year. Yes, there are the Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Stephen Kings of the world, but if you’re writing to be able to rub income statements with them, good luck. I was a CFO in my career—a numbers geek. So I should be able to analyze the numbers but there are way too many variables.

Is it better to:

• Charge full price for your book, and make a larger profit even if you sell less copies?
• Price to the majority or the ‘standard’ market price for your genre?
• Use a lower price strategy ($1.99 or 0.99) and hope make up the per unit loss in volume?
• Price that first book free, hoping to hook new readers?

But like everything else in this crazy industry, the answer is—it depends.

• How stand-out is your book?
• Is the genre hot?
• Do you have a large following?
• Do you run ads?
• Sales?

And how do you quantify all that? I’ll stop, because even listing is giving me anxiety, but just know I could go on.

What about Kindle Unlimited? In case you don’t know, it’s a monthly subscription service for books; you read as many as you’d like from their library one monthly fee. For authors, those payments go into a ‘pool’ and you are paid by the number of pages of your enrolled books that have been read.

I’m of two minds about the KU strategy as well. I know it can work, especially in genres with voracious readers, like Romance. But on the other hand, once a reader goes KU, do they ever go back? As a reader, when I’m getting a ton of books for one monthly subscription price, why would I pay about that amount for ONE book?

That one really troubles me.

But you know what? None of that matters because of Queuing Theory. Never heard of it? Here’s the Wikipedia definition: Queueing theory is the mathematical study of waiting lines, or queues.  Boooring, right? But hang on, here’s an example.

You’re late for work, stuck in slow moving traffic. You’re fuming. Finally, you pull abreast of an accident; an eighteen-wheeler T-boned a car. An ambulance is on scene. You slow, so you can check it out.

You are now part of the problem. And you know it, but you want to see.

What does this have to do with book pricing strategy?

Every person, even if they know their actions will adversely affect the whole, does what is best for them. It doesn’t make you evil, or selfish—it’s human nature. Put on your mask first, then help others, right?

So KU is here to stay, regardless of whether it’s cheapening the product or not. Pricing free, or lowballing pricing is the same.

What every author has to decide for themselves, is what is best for them.

And how do you decide what is best for you? The answer is, it depends…

Yeah, I’m still researching and testing ideas the answers too, but at least I’m no longer angsting over the argument.

How do you feel about pricing strategies? Have you found something that works for you?