When you are selling your book through traditional book distribution channels, you have limited options when it comes to your price. Retail customers have been conditioned by the market to expect a certain price range for books AND IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE VALUE OF THE CONTENT!!!
Imagine yourself standing in line for the cashier at your local book store. That is the place where they have racks of little impulse items for sale. Some of them are little booklets with horoscope predictions for people of various 'star signs'. Now, you have a booklet of your own that has the exact formula and complete instructions for turning lead into gold using common materials everyone has in their kitchens. Your book gives step-by-step instructions for the whole process that a 6 year old can follow. But, you have a problem:
Your book is the same size and shape as one of those horoscope books - that's all of the space you needed to deliver the information you had (as valuable as it is.)
How much do you think people would be willing to pay for your book? The answer is, the same price as all the other SIMILAR LOOKING books. So, if those horoscope books cost $3.25US, then that's what your book will be worth when sold in a bookstore. Price it higher, and nobody will buy it - regardless of the value of the content.
Walk through your local book store and check the prices. Similar sized books in each section will have a narrow range of prices - and it will be rare to find a book priced higher than $30US (coffee table art/photography books are one exception - but they have their own narrow price range.) If you want to sell through traditional book channels, price yours in relation to other books in the marketplace.
I want you to do one more experiment while you are at the bookstore. Grab a copy of a popular audio book from the shelf and then go and find the print version. Compare the prices. I'm willing to bet the audio book is considerably more expensive than the printed version - and it's likely to be and abridgment of the original (so it doesn't even contain all of the content.)
If you really want to make money from the book you've created, start looking at other ways to package the content that have a higher perceived value. Videos, seminars, audios, home study courses, software, and other formats have a much higher value in the marketplace. The content of your book is just that - content. You can use it to create other products.
Fiction books don't have quite as many options for repackaging as non-fiction, but an audio book always works, and Kindle editions are easy to produce as well.
Here's an article from my marketing blog that details the value of a software product that was created from the same content as a non-fiction book with a comparison of the selling prices:
Converting Content Into Software For Big ProfitsJust a few ideas to get you started thinking about the value of your book versus the value of your content.
Andrew
