Kindle Book Pricing Strategy - How to Price Your Kindle eBook
About this video
Dale explains Kindle eBook royalty structure and three pricing strategies. KDP pays 70% for eBooks priced between $2.99 and $9.99 and 35% outside that range, so a $19.99 book at 35% roughly matches $9.99 at 70%; KDP Select, he says, also offers 70% globally plus Kindle Countdown Deals and free promotions, and Kindle Unlimited page reads influence bestseller rank. Strategy one, price pulsing, is moving the price up and down gradually to find the sweet spot an audience will pay, which he recommends mainly for new authors or those with a team. Strategy two, hotshotting, is a drastic limited-time drop, e.g. a 99-cent pre-order before a $9.99 launch, to spike sales and trigger Amazon recommendations. Strategy three, killer copy, is focusing on a compelling book description so readers will pay a higher price, citing Brian Meeks as an example. He then outlines running manual ‘research ads’ during pre-order for about 30 to 60 days to find converting keywords, raising the price significantly at launch and standing firm, and scaling winning campaigns. He warns 99-cent pricing pays only about 35 cents per sale and that Amazon’s A9 algorithm favors consistency, e.g. 10 sales a day over months, over a brief spike.
Key takeaways
- Price between $2.99 and $9.99 for the 70% royalty; outside that range the royalty is 35%
- Price pulsing — gradual up-and-down adjustments — can help new authors discover what their audience will pay, but is burdensome to babysit daily
- Hotshotting uses a steep limited-time drop to create urgency and a sales snowball, then returns to full price at launch
- Strong book description copy can support a higher price, per Dale’s ‘killer copy’ strategy and his Brian Meeks example
- Beware 99-cent pricing: Dale says it pays about 35 cents per sale and a short spike is less valuable to Amazon’s algorithm than steady daily sales
Episode details: published March 20, 2019 · 16:17 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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