How I set my book's price online

Happy New Year, everyone! I trust your January's treating you well. Have you gotten back to the office yet?

I missed the past two blog posts, what with the hectic festive season, and the fact that both Christmas and New Year's Day happened to fall on a Tuesday this time around. But I'm back with a bang.

One of the things I always like to do around this time of year is to revisit my books' categorisations, keywords, and prices at retailers. But I try to be super-scientific about it. For each book at each retailer, I have a look at the categories and keywords. Do they still accurately reflect the subject matter of the book, and what I think readers are looking for?

Then it's on to pricing, and here's where I get really nerdy. Take a look:

For each category the book is in, I go look at the top ten books in that category. I get each one's price, deduct VAT if the retailer charges VAT to South Africans (like Amazon does). Then I divide that by the number of pages the book has, which gives me a price per page.

When I'm all done, I multiply the overall average price per page by the number of pages in my book. Then I round to the nearest 0.09, and voila.

It's a lot of work, but I like this approach because it ensures I stay competitive, and instead of charging what I think my work is worth, I'm charging what I know people are willing to pay for books in that category.

What do you think? Does this pricing strategy make sense to you?

By the way, it's impossible for me to share the 2019 prices for each of my books, in each of their formats, here in this post. However, if you'd like to browse through all my books and see for yourself what they cost at the various retailers, click here.