Monica posted a very useful comparison of Lulu vs. Createspace distribution plans.  The comparison assumes a 160 page b&w 6x9 priced at $11.90.

What 160 page book will readers purchase for $11.90?  I don't know nor do I know what is the appropriate price for Molokai Reef.

Molokai Reef is a mystery novel printed at Createspace in b&w, 6x9, 252 pages.  Recent paperback mystery novels at Amazon are priced from $7.99 to $9.99.  I don't see how an unknown author can command more.

Therefore I priced the paperback edition of Molokai Reef at $9.99.  The Createspace royalty calculator predicts

Molokai Reef is on the Pro plan and I opted for Expanded Distribution.  ED yields a whopping 12 cents royalty.

I could price the book higher to realize a greater royalty but that works only if readers are willing to pay more for Molokai Reef than say The Street Lawyer by John Grisham at $9.99 due Sept. 2010.

How does everyone price their work?

Well, first, I don't think we're competing with John Grisham, per se. That's also a mass market paperback. But aside from that, I have a book in the exact same dimensions and length as yours. Although it really hasn't sold (the paperback hasn't - the kindle and in-person sales have had a few bites), I've priced it at 12.95, and will not be changing it.

There are a few reasons I wouldn't want to drop it. One is profit, of course. If the difference between $10 and $11 is $0.10 in profit vs. $1.00, then I'd much rather have one person buy an $11 copy rather than 9 buy the $10, from a purely marketing standpoint. For distribution, 9 does sound better, but it's not always the case.

Seth Godin, marketing guru, talks a lot about creating rabid fans who will tell others about your work. A legion of people who only buy $9.99 works en masse and never review them aren't as valuable as a single rabid fan who'd not only pay more, but would tell others, ask for sequels, and effectively market the book for you.

The second is "perceived value" - IE: expensive things are better quality than cheap things. It seems strange, but it's almost a fact of life. For example: Apple computers. Expensive, but brilliant marketing and visual design have made these incredibly expensive products very profitable, even if they barely penetrate the market. So if I sell my book for less, people will automatically think it's worth less, or that I think my work isn't worth more than that.

Pride in my work also plays a part. My book is worth that much in physical form. The content, not the physical product. Which is also why my e-book price is more than $1 - my book is worth more than that!

The problem, though, is that the marketing war that Amazon, Walmart, and other major publishers/retailers are playing screws up the playing field for the authors.

Unfortunately, that means I cannot give a direct answer to your dilemma. My only hope would be that a store using ED would stock the work, a reader would see it on a shelf somewhere, decide it was too expensive at first glance, then come home and find out its cheaper online. They'd pay less, the price we set it for to begin with, and we'd get a better royalty. I can dream, can't I?

How about cutting your costs? Our book is 6x9, ~260 pages, list price is 18.95 and printed by Lightning Source POD with a 30% trade discount. It sells on Amazon and B&N at 17.10 plus shipping. Our cost is 3.66 per book. Your cost at CreatSpace is significantly higher.

I suggest Aaron Shepard's book, Aiming at Amazon. He says ignore Amazon, get an account at Lightning Source which is a direct supplier to Amazon and B&N. The only requirement to get an account with LS is to be a legitimate publisher which is not difficult. Aaron's book will give you all the guidance you need.

LS also offers an ebook program but with limited formats. Instead, I just started with Smashwords which seems to be working out okay. The great thing about SW is they convert your manuscript into multiple formats so you are not limited. They have a pretty good guide for preparing your manuscript to get the best conversion results. And they have recently made some great connections for ebook sales including Amazon Kindle.

Note - This is our first book so I'm not speaking from a lot of experience. The publishing guidance from Aaron Shephard and Smashwords seems to be working well. Our steepest learning curve is marketing, where the advice received and money invested has not had such good results. That's one reason I appreciate this forum as another opportunity to help a small publisher get the word out.

I think it's correct that a higher price often suggest a higher quality to the customer. As I do have a lot of different books available on amazon, I would say the most important are amazon rankings (your book must be easy to find in the search results), customer reviews, and your own marketing activities for your book. But not the list price so much.
I have a number of books published which do sell OK at about $11.90-$16.90 "without" doing any marketing for them at all (but those one are non-fiction).

I think it depends on the book, and what the author's goals are. In general, I think fiction is more price sensitive, especially for a new author -- with non-fiction, I know if I NEED the book for something, I will pay way over what I think is a reasonable price. With fiction, I'm just as likely to pick another book or order it from the library.

However, before CS started pro plan their prices were higher, and we had Hajj Journal (only 60 pages, but color) priced at $16. It was too much. When pro plan began the cost to us dropped and we dropped the price to $12, which seems to be the correct point.

Two of our anthologies are probably under-priced at $12 -- a bookseller friend told me she felt she could sell them at $14.95. If we want to go with ED, we will have to. I am mulling that over, as we have extensively publicized them at the lower price.

Thanks for the great responses.

With CS and the Pro plan, my cost for Molokai Reef is $3.87 so it isn't that different from TrueWind's Lightning Source POD.  As for the e-book edition, I uploaded it to Kindle in parallel with CS and then discovered Smashwords a week or two later.  SW is terrific and my e-book quickly made it to B&N's e-book store.

While I agree that I'm not competing with John Grisham - as in his league - I do feel that I am competing with him and other mystery/thriller writers who based upon my research at Amazon are offering their mass paperbacks in the $6.99 to $9.99 range.  While 6 x 9 trade paperbacks generally are priced higher, I don't think I've seen a mystery in that format.  Someday when I have time I'll reformat and recalculate the CS costs for a 5 x 8 or similar size.

I agree with SusanIves that non-fiction pricing is a different animal.

Although Molokai Reef is a mystery novel, the next book that I plan to publish in January is a political thriller based upon current events with a heavy dose of satire.  In some ways I am using Molokai Reef as a learning platform.

Back on topic, at the Maryland Writers Assoc. meeting on Tuesday I encountered an author with a similar sized mystery.  She used Lulu and for various reasons, including a higher per copy cost, set the price at $15.99 - a price she is finding difficult to sell except person to person.  Frustrated, she has dropped her e-book price through Smashwords to $0.99 for December and has sold around 400 including those at the intial price of $1.59.

Has anyone ran across a study of POD authors comparing genres to price?

By allowing a 30% discount, Truewind is being unnecessarily generous to Amazon and B&N. They will gladly accept 20% (or even less when they offer a discount to their customers).

Michael N. Marcus

author of "Become a Real Self-Publisher: Don’t be a Victim of a Vanity Press," http://www.amazon.com/dp/0981661742

author of "Stories I'd Tell My Children (but maybe not until they're adults)," coming 4/1/10. http://silversandsbooks.com/storiesbookino.html

http://BookMakingBlog.blogspot.com
http://www.SilverSandsBooks.com