Pricing Your Book on Amazon KDP

About this video

In an unscripted video prompted by a viewer comment from Sunny, Dale clarifies his earlier brief advice on pricing a self-published book. The commenter had listed finer factors to consider — page count, what is selling in the genre, amount of research, color versus black-and-white pages, and so on. Dale agrees those metrics matter but advises new self-publishers not to bother with so many of them at first, because they can become overwhelmed publishing their first, second, or even sixth book; he suggests focusing on finer metrics once you are about a dozen publications deep. His main method is competitive reconnaissance: look at popular books in your niche (he gives his own fitness books as the example), note how many pages they have and how they cite resources, and study their one-star and two-star reviews to find patterns in complaints — such as editing, formatting, missing information, or things needing clarification. He recommends actually purchasing competitors’ books, not to plagiarize or steal what they do, but to understand what makes them successful and connect with their audience, then deliver the key elements readers say are missing in your own book for your audience.

Key takeaways

• Newer publishers should keep pricing simple at first and add finer metrics around a dozen publications in, to avoid overwhelm
• Factors named in the discussion include page count, genre sales, research, and color versus black-and-white pages
• Study popular books in your niche for length, sourcing, and how they connect with readers
• Mine one- and two-star reviews of competitors for recurring complaints you can fix in your own book
• Buy competitors’ books to learn from them — explicitly not to plagiarize them

Episode details: published September 3, 2017 · 4:03 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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